I notice that Gary Weiss commented on Patrick Byrne’ post on this blog, describing the post as a sample of obsessive behavior about naked short selling.
I have nothing to say to that, except that people who’ve had to battle a number of foes can sometimes become what’s called hypervigilant. I’ve certainly had the experience.
But that’s not my point here. I bring up the post only because Weiss writes like someone who’d never come across me before, duly (and snarkily) noting the “obscurity” of this blog. Well and good. No offense taken. We like our obscurity…it keeps us meek. And we’re told the meek will inherit the earth…or at least, what’s left of it after our oligarchs finish raping it.
However, I bring this up not to air any wound to my amour propre but because Judd Bagley, the main reporter at award-winning business blog Deep Capture, has accused Weiss of using sock puppets on wiki, and has posted screen shots to prove it. [It’s not germane to this tale that too uses sock-puppets].
One of Weiss’s alleged sock-puppets on wiki, says , goes by the name, MantanMoreland (other names used there and elsewhere include Samiharris – at wiki – and Tom Sykes – at Daily Kos and other places).
Now, it so happens that when I was trying to get rid of my web-stalker, Tony R, I ran into someone called Mantanmoreland on the message boards that he haunted. Was this Weiss? Or was it someone else? You judge.
Correction: I have crossed out the section below where I have incorrectly identified Tony R as someone by the name of Villasenor, whose postings/m.o. seemed similar to me on many counts. He has denied it (see comment section). My post resumes after the crossed out section.
Interestingly, Ry__s also claims he is not Ry__s.
[However, V doesn’t deny that – like R__s he uses multiple aliases, some very similar, frequents the same message boards, and attacks similar things].
Fair enough. I’ve added a correction. It makes no difference to my claim about R__ls or about Mantanmoreland, only it leaves me still in the dark who this person Ry__ls is.
Since the suit lists multiple aliases for him and some of these aliases resemble the multiple aliases that R___ls uses, their targets are similar, and their venues and forums often identical, it is an understandable error, if it’s one.
In any case, I will use R__ls name and strike through V’s, to avoid giving offense/slandering the wrong person….although it’s clear that neither of these two mind slandering other people.
I’ve no axe to grind in the matter.
To recap: V is a one-time stock-dealer who was fined by the NASD. He’s also a small-time racketeer (http://mindbodypolitic.com/2009/09/27/blogger-credibility/e http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/read/ARIZONA/2005-06/1118951523) and a former groupie of securities fraudster, Amr Elgindy and his Anthony Pacific site. (http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=22945870). In whatever time is left over from that, he’s given to web stalking and harassing, for instance, of a (http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=15095618mber)
Just to be clear, I am agnostic about the merits of any of his claims about, who might be doing something illegal, for all I know. I mention this just to show that has a history of this sort of thing.
[With no cause at all, Tony R has also libeled Georgetown University professor, James Angel, because of a financial film he made that that didn’t conform to his ideas (as far as I recall the subject).
Anyway, I approached a number of of sites (such as, Indymedia, KYCNews, and the SEC complaints board) to have them remove Tony R’s libels and to find out how to make him desist. It turned out he was in Guatemala, so it would be hard for me to do anything legally about him. I was also told he was likely to just switch aliases and ratchet up the harassment, if I went after him. In fact, whenever I mentioned his most common alias name, Tony R, he would show up like lightning on this board and spam me (that’s why I’m not using his complete name).
Now here’s the interesting part. While I was trying to find out more about Ry__s, I came across an irate exchange between him (under one of his many aliases http://www.chillingeffects.org/uncat/notice.cgi?NoticeID=1748) and someone called Mantanmoreland. Note: it was on a message-board (not on wiki).
I wrote to Mantanmoreland (it was in February 2008), asking if he knew anything more about Tony R. and we went back and forth about it for some two weeks, exchanging around two dozen emails, most of which I still have. Those emails went under my name. In them I explained that I’d become the unwitting target of this Tony R, solely because I’d been hired to write a book with the president of a company that Tony R. was fixated about.
Here’s my question. Deep Capture says unequivocally that Mantanmoreland is Gary Weiss. Weiss denies it equally flatly. Now, I exchanged dozens of emails only a year ago with Mantanmoreland about a situation that he could hardly forget, since he had his gripe with Tony R too. But Weiss’ recent blog post seems to indicate that he has no idea who I am.
That leaves only one possibility. Either Weiss or Bagley is in error (to put it as mildly as possible)…
Which is it? And what would that mean? And does that have anything to do with the recent (thwarted) attempt to delete my wiki page?
Added: As a matter of fact, by assessing the various reactions to this post (who posted, where and on what forums), I clarified the answer to the above question to my satisfaction…
Lila,
I appreciate your decision to revisit this issue. That you and Weiss (as Mantanmoreland) had previously interacted is very interesting.
As far as whether it is Weiss or myself who’s in error, allow me to add a bit more information.
1- At one point, the matter of Mantanmoreland was the biggest controversy on Wikipedia, and resulted in an epic effort to get to the bottom of things, in the context of what’s called an “Arbitration Committee Case”. The outcome of that effort was to find that indeed, Gary Weiss was sockpuppeting as Mantanmoreland and several others.
Keep in mind, that conclusion was reached by many (as in, scores) of other users based on their own investigations, not by me.
As it happens, all along, I possessed the smoking gun which proved beyond doubt the link between Weiss and Mantanmoreland. Unfortunately I did not have permission from the source of the evidence to reveal as much until a few months later. This was reported on in the UK tech publication The Register.
As to whether or not I sockpuppeted on Wikipedia…yes I did, in the sense that once an account was banned for accusing Gary Weiss of what he was later proven to be doing, I created another to try again. However, my purpose in doing so was not to influence the content of any articles by feigning more support than actually existed for a position (the technical definition of sockpuppetry). Instead, it was to remedy a serious problem.
In my book there’s a substantive distinction between the two activities.
I hope that clears some things up. I also sympathize with you for your encounters with Mr. Villasenor. That guy is (in)famous for his dirty style of personal persuasion.
Lila,
Well done.
Yes, Weiss is Mantanmoreland, and has been roundly exposed in so many places that I had thought this question was dead and buried. For example:
1) The greatest civil war in Wikipedia’s history revolved around just that question, and was resolved only after a great deal of evidence was produced. You can begin to get a sense of a small mount of that evidence (and the ability of Gary Weiss to lie lie lie when caught) here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Mantanmoreland/RfC
2) A British tech journal called The Register studied all of this (including emails of Gary Weiss that Judd obtained off an abandoned computer) and wrote numerous stories connecting Gary Weiss to Mantanmoreland and attempts to engage in a cover-up of these issues:
“Emails Show Journalist Rigged Wikipedia’s Naked Short Article” http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/01/wikipedia_and_naked_shorting/
“Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah’s Traverse Mountain”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/06/wikipedia_and_overstock/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/08/yahoo_message_board_vuln/
3) Within DeepCapture and antisocialmedia.net Judd and I have published ridiculoously extensive documentation of Gary Weiss’s long hi
http://antisocialmedia.net/final-word-on-weiss/story of manipulating social media through:
http://antisocialmedia.net/the-final-word-on-gary-weiss-and-wikipedia/
http://www.deepcapture.com/gary-weiss-scaramouch-psychopath/
http://antisocialmedia.net/
His behavior with you, Lila, is completely consistent with his long history.
Warm regards,
Patrick Byrne
Journalist, DeepCapture.com
CEO, Overstock.com
Hi Judd –
Thanks for stopping by. Well, yes, I do think you’re in the right on this.
Lila Rajiva
Lila (I’m assuming you’re mb4),
I will look at what you’ve mentioned, thank you for the insights.
One quick question (maybe better suited to email but since I don’t have yours just yet) is Joel Nadel the same fellow whose death was announced here?
Lila Rajiva,
You have again confused me with Tony Ry__s. For your information, Roberto Villasenor and Tony Ry__s are two different people.
The only thing that we have in common is that we both were sued by International Scamster Michael J. Zwebner for posting on message boards about his massive scams. All lawsuits by this individual and his companies have been dismissed. His company has had its registration by the SEC REVOKED and no longer trades.
Tony Ry__ls used the “wolfblitzzer01” alias on Raging Bull and I am “the_worm06”.
Even the novice researcher would know that these are two different people.
I am strongly suggesting that you stop with these accusations and libel against me, or you will truly understand what it is like when the_worm06 pursues you.
A message to Judd Bagley: So far I have kept out of the fight that you have with the “evil naked bashers” of the world. I have also not discussed any research that has been done on your boss or his company, OSTK. My recommendation to you is to stop with the libel against me or I will have no choice to begin publishing Research on OSTK on my blog and elsewhere – and it won’t be pretty.
regards,
Roberto Villasenor
the_worm06
Now that both Patrick Byrne and Judd Bagley are commenting here, I have a questions for of them:
Patrick: Are you going to restate prior period financial statements to comply with GAAP or are you going to force the SEC to make you do it?
Judd: With the SEC re-opening its investigation of Overstock.com why are you continuing to aid and abet a public company sponsored smear campaign against its critics?
Regards to all,
Sam E. Antar (convicted felon and former Crazy Eddie CFO)
Just a quick correction: a ‘wiki’ is simply a page that can be edited by the public. ‘wikipedia’ is a particular website that implements the wiki concept. :P. (There are countless other wikis out there. Wikipedia is a relatively new phenomenon.)
And a quick comment on the court-ordered injuction against that clown:
“Defendants are forever barred from making, stating, mentioning, posting on the internet anything which included the words [bla bla bla] or any derivations thereof.”
… FOREVER barred? That’s quite long. And unusually cruel, imho. (Also, the verb tense of the word “include” seems incorrect — who writes these things? :b)
“Anyone, or any entity, with notice of this judgment which republishes any past internet posting made by Defendants or any of Defendant’s alias (or any other alias of Defendants known to said persons or entities) which identifies Plaintiffs […] is also in violation and could be held in criminal and/or civil contempt.”
… is that a joke? I would be considered a criminal if I reposted this clown’s past posts (whatever they were)? Eeek. I wish I could get a similar court-injunction against religious believers, for libelling reality and science.
I find it hilarious that people actually use Wikipedia as a definitive resource. I am also really curious as to the nature of his wiki-“offense”. Whatever he did, using whatever sockpuppet, couldn’t the articles in question have been simply edited and fixed? That’s the whole point of wikis — the inevitability of malicious/erroneous posters, and thus an omnipresent implicit expectation for *a reliable second source* — overshadowed, hopefully, by a majority of honest proof-readers.
Lila:
The main issue regarding Overstock.com is that every single financial report from the company’s inception has at least initially violated GAAP and SEC disclosure rules.
Details here: http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com/2009/10/overstockcom-ceo-patrick-byrne-is-in.html
Patrick Byrne’s ramblings about “market reform” is part of his effort to create a wall of false integrity around him to distract public attention away from his own misdeeds.
Sam E. Antar
Dennis –
Yes, of course, I don’t think what Weiss did – or is alleged to do – is all that different from what wiki editors do anyway…
And Amazon reviews are notoriously manipulated.
Why it is OK for a friend or sympathizer or political fellow traveler to write up a great review on a book for a magazine, but if a family member or friend does that on Amazon, it’s somehow grossly unethical?
No one takes wiki very seriously as a scholarly source except the masses.
However, it does have information that’s useful and is a good starting point for research.
Re – defamation. It’s extremely hard to bring suit in the US – as the bar rests on “intent” and malice. Whereas in the UK, it’s much easier. I’m a libertarian, but libertarian theory on representation is quite outdated. People are in fact injured by malicious slander. Ry__s goes around calling me a stock fraud, when I’ve never sold a stock in my life; he claims I am covering up for people I’ve never met; that I attended events I never attended; and covering for a company that I’ve had a fall out with. It’s rubbish. And then he recycles this thousands of times over the net? It’s done palpable harm to me..
How is this not different from assaulting someone? And anytime, one tries to confront it, one brings more notoriety to his false claims and does more damage?
How is that not unjust?
What’s happened in the US can be traced to this inability to differentiate between liberty and license.
Too bad the whole world has to pay for that..
Mr. Antar –
I don’t understand the full significance of the SEC’s case against Mr. Byrne. It seems to me the entire earnings game is manipulated by analysts and in turn by companies..
There is a difference between things that are illegal but not morally of terrible importance and things that are both morally and legally reprehensible.
Besides that, of course, Mr. Byrne’s difficulties with Overstock and the SEC surely have nothing to do with the substance of his charges about “naked short-selling” – an issue that’s attracted the attention of dozens of people who don’t carry that baggage.
You yourself have been on the wrong side of the law, but now work with the SEC, do you not?
A further point – it seems to me there is a substantial difference between defrauding other people of their property or attacking or diminishing other people’s properties (which is what naked short-selling does) – and guarding one’s own property from the government (tax evasion,, which seems to be what a lot of the off-shore racket is about). As a libertarian, I see the latter as simply attempts by people to keep their money out of the hands of the government, which, to all appearances, is a racket – and a blood-thirsty racket, as well.
(Now, abusing share-holder trust is a different thing, admittedly).
Anyway – the characters of either Mr. Byrne or Mr. Weiss, or their alleged improprieties is not – and should not be – the issue. The issue is the merits of the campaign against naked short-selling, the possible collusion between banks and hedge-funds, the corruption of the SEC, the possible capture of Wall Street media, the stranglehold of Goldman Sachs on the government, the manipulation of the market by the bullion banks and their friends in government, and the existence of avenues for manipulation through secret software, secret trading platforms, or less covertly, through agencies such as the DTCC.
And by the way, from what we’ve seen, and from the fact that NO INSIDER has so far been punished or even lost his office, I have to conclude that the SEC and the government are firmly on the wrong side of the law (I mean the law as having some moral and consensual base and not simply law as positive law).
In fact, we have a criminal government.
I said of Mr. Villasenor:
“That guy is (in)famous for his dirty style of personal persuasion.”
And in response, Mr. Villasenor said:
“My recommendation to you is to stop with the libel against me or I will have no choice to begin publishing Research on OSTK on my blog and elsewhere – and it won’t be pretty.”
I wonder whether, given enough time to let it sink in, Mr. Villasenor will spot the extreme irony in his response.
Yes – it’s libel when you’re on the receiving end…and it’s a public service when you’d doling it out to someone else.
The other point is even if earnings are manipulated or whatever..the fact is Overstock on other companies are actual companies doing business and creating or retailing goods, whereas speculators and traders are simply shuffling paper, creating nothing.
The more they control the terms of the game, the more the value of the economy is diminished.
Money shuffling and managing rather than goods and services become central to the economy..you get a hollowed out economy. Which is what we have. Shells in a shell game.
Lila,
You state that:
“If I confused you with Tony Ry__s, that would be quite easy to do since you post on the same boards with multiple aliases…”
What boards are you talking about?
When you make accusations, please back up your accusations with facts. The last message boards that I posted on in which Mr. Ryals also posted were the Raging Bull message boards about 5 years ago. There are thousands of aliases that also post on those boards – are you saying that those thousand other people are also Tony Ryals?
Then you also posted the following:
“I will gladly republish my post with a link to your comment. However, if you got sued by Zwebner for defamation and he got sued too, both post under aliases (and Ry__s also claims a worm alias – perhaps with another number), and both post on similar forums, you can’t blame people for assuming you are the same person.”
The international scam artist Michael J. Zwebner has sued hundreds of people. Are you suggesting that all these people are also Tony Ryals?
Your factual information used to make these libelous comments about me, Roberto Villasenor, have such lack of support that the probability of me owning 1/2 of your assets due to a succesful libel lawsuit against you is very very high.
I urge you to again begin doing some research on the_worm06 and find out what happens when you attack the_worm06 in such manner.
good luck to you, for you will need it
regards,
Roberto Villasenor
the_worm06