Overstock.com and Patrick Byrne Have an Enemies List That Includes Friends and Family Members of Critics

Updated:

If you are a critic of Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) beware that CEO Patrick M. Byrne and his paid stalker Judd Bagley wants to know all about your friends, acquaintances, and family members on Facebook in a desperate effort to intimidate you into silence. According to Barry Ritholtz:

Here is something weird, and a little creepy: The freakshow that is DeepCapture.com seems to have grabbed all of the Facebook friends of anyone who has ever: a) written anything positive about short selling or 2) said anything negative about Overstock.com.....

For those of you who are unaware of what DeepCapture is, the name suggests that the short sellers have “Captured” the press. Deep Capture is a work of Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com.

For those of you who are unaware of what DeepCapture is, the name suggests that the short sellers have “Captured” the press. Deep Capture is a work of Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com.

DeepCapture.com is a web site financed by Patrick Byrne and its managing partner is Judd Bagley. Byrne claims to moonlight as a reporter for Deep Capture.

Rest assured that I will continue to expose frauds committed by Patrick Byrne and assist the Securities and Exchange Commission in its investigation of the company despite Byrne's attempts to intimidate and stalk me, my family members, and friends.

Obviously, Patrick Byrne is in a deep panic. Every initial financial report issued by Overstock.com for every reporting period since the company's inception has violated Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and SEC disclosure rules. The company has restated its financial reports two times in the last three years due to such GAAP and SEC disclosure violations. The SEC is investigating Overstock.com after I alerted them about new GAAP violations by the company. Afterwards, Overstock.com fired Grant Thornton as the company's auditors when they recommended another restatement of the company's financial reports, as I previously recommended in my blog. The company filed an "unreviewed" Q3 2009 10-Q and CEO Patrick Byrne and CFO Steve Chesnut did not sign required Sarbanes-Oxley certifications. NASDAQ sent Overstock.com a letter warning the company of a possible de-listing.

Update:

In my particular case, I have two Facebook profiles: a public profile and a private one. Apparently, Patrick Byrne had somebody hack into my private profile which lists friends, acquaintances, family members, friends of my children, and others. Altogether, Patrick Byrne's enemies list has 7,483 names!

Since Patrick Byrne is so obsessed with me I've relaxed my privacy settings on Facebook to help him along. Memo to Byrne: I am not afraid of you.

Update 2:

After broad condemnation by other bloggers, Patrick Byrne trimmed down his enemies list to 1,689 names. See other blogs:

December 10, 2009: Gary Weiss Blog - Patrick Byrne Update: Hacking into Facebook to Compile an Enemies List by Gary Weiss

December 10, 2009: Dag Blog - Patrick Byrne and Overstock.com go Nixonian with Enemies List by William K . Wolfrum

December 10, 2009: Business Insider - Did Patrick Byrne Hack Into Private Facebook Pages As Part Of His Journalist Intimidation Scheme? by Joe Weisenthal

December 10, 2009: Barron's Tech Trader Daily - Overstock’s Byrne Publishes Facebook Ties of Journalists, Fund Managers by Eric Savitz


Written by:

Sam E. Antar

Other relevant blog posts:

08/05/09: Open Letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission: Stop Overstock.com GAAP Violations Now!

11/22/09: Open Letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission Part 2: New Information on Overstock.com's GAAP and SEC Disclosure Violations

11/23/09: Open Letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission Part 3: Overstock.com Lied About Grant Thornton and Concealed Error

11/26/09: Open Letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission Part 4: Patrick Byrne Ignores Real Issues As He Vilifies Grant Thornton

Disclosure:

I am a convicted felon and a former CPA. As the criminal CFO of Crazy Eddie, I helped Eddie Antar and other members of his family mastermind one of the largest securities frauds uncovered during the 1980's. If it weren't for the efforts of the FBI, SEC, Postal Inspector's Office, and class action plaintiff's lawyers who investigated, prosecuted, and sued me, I would still be the criminal CFO of Crazy Eddie today.

I do not own Overstock.com securities short or long. My research on Overstock.com and in particular its lying CEO Patrick Byrne is a freebie for securities regulators and the public in order to help me get into heaven, though I doubt that I will ever get there anyway. I will probably end up joining corporate miscreants such as Patrick Byrne in hell. In any case, exposing corporate crooks is a lot of fun for a forcibly "retired" crook like me and analyzing Overstock.com's financial reporting is a forensic accountant's wet dream.