The timing and manner of the temporary court order (see my earlier blog post) that prevents access to the Deep Capture website interests me.
The order, reported at Stockwatch, was handed down on October 19, the same day by the Supreme Court of British Columbia (Canada), the home state of the Vancouver Stock Exchange, long recognized as a center of stock-market schemes of all kinds.
The order was the result of a complaint by a Vancouver stock promoter, that he is named in a libelous manner in all but five of the chapters of a book on Wall Street crime that Deep Capture was serializing. The book, “The Miscreants’ Global Bust Out” (a spin on the famous book about Michael Milken, called “The Predators’ Ball”) was by one of the three writers on Deep Capture, Mark Mitchell, a former Columbia Journalism Review editor.
1. My first point is that the allegedly defamatory material had been up at Deep Capture from much earlier this year. The first chapter, “Was The United States Attacked By Financial Terrorists?” was serialized at the site on April 29, 2011. And the promoter is only one of dozens of people placed in at least equally damaging light, many of them much higher up the food chain:
Patrick Byrne:
“Jim Chanos was Eliot Spitzer’s biggest donor. That’s all been publicly reported and acknowledged and Chanos said he didn’t know who she was, he didn’t know she was servicing Eliot Spitzer… Well that may all be.
“But if it isn’t, put it this way: if any hedge fund was involved in the procuring of hookers for Eliot Spitzer, that hedge fund owned himself the Attorney General of the state of New York. Right? If you bring him hookers, you own him. And if you look at the list of the companies shorted by [Steve] Cohen and Chanos and guys in that little circle, and then you compare it to the list of companies Eliot Spitzer went after, you’ll see a remarkable coincidence.”
However, the only response so far to these assertions, even on the web, has been silence.
Even more interesting, there have been no claims of libel or defamation, until Nazerali’s claim.
Most interesting of all, just a month before this order, Deep Capture did suddenly begin to get “Nasty-Grams,” according to Byrne, September 20, 2011.
2. Point two. The only other person who did try to remove Deep Capture material is also directly linked to the target of a lawsuit by Patrick Byrne.
A video of well-known hedge-fund manager turned publisher, author, and TV personality Jim Cramer, in which he admitted to intentionally manipulating stocks, was taken down in 2010 from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, as well as from other websites, by Cramer’s lawyers. It was Deep Capture that had supplied Stewart with the video.
Cramer is a former stock-broker for Goldman Sachs (the target, with Merrill Lynch, of Byrne’s current suit) who went on to run his own firm from the offices of Michael Steinhardt, well-known hedge-fund manager. Over the course of a lucrative career, Cramer invested money for such New York luminaries as Martin Peretz (who owns the New Republic), as well as for his old class mate Eliot Spitzer, son of a billionaire New York real estate developer, NY Attorney General, and Governor of New York. Spitzer was brought down by a hooker scandal, subsequent to which the hooker, allegedly, stayed in the house of Jim Chanos, a short-seller accused of market-manipulation and manipulation of the financial media.
Other people, including libertarian financial adviser Barry Dyke, author of a 2007 book on Wall Street corruption (Pirates of Manhattan), have also accused Cramer (ex of Goldman) of promoting Goldman Sachs stock picks and of defending the firm’s practices. Eliot Spitzer (then Attorney General of New York) Byrne implies, went after a list of companies that strangely parallels the list targeted by short-seller Chanos.
Cramer made his admission of stock manipulation on the video in 2006. It’s since been removed from several sites, see here, according to this article (here). His video admission also made the rounds of the web in 2007, which you can see here .
3. The third interesting point is that the injunction against Deep Capture came down on the same day that the promoter filed a claim against the site and its owners, and it came without any notice to them.
The date until which the temporary order remains is December 2, 2011. Oddly, or not oddly, depending on how you are disposed to think about Byrne’s naked-short-selling conspiracy theory, that is just before the December 5, 2011 trial date originally set for the suit by Mr. Byrne. The suit is filed against Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, but was first filed in February 2007 against GS, Morgan Stanley and other prime brokers; then settled with all but two defendants in December 2010 for $4.4 million; and refiled in November 2010 against Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, this time invoking RICO (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act).
I’ve since learned that the trial date has been postponed to next year (March 5, 2012) and the petition to use RICO has been denied, so perhaps the closeness of the original date to the ending date of the BC court’s temporary order is nothing but coincidence.
In any case, for a view from his foes and targets, here is a suitably grim blog post from financial journalist Gary Weiss, summing up the complaint against Byrne. Byrne and Weiss have sparred for several years in one of the financial blogosphere’s most acrimonious and bizarre wrestling matches:
“I know a fellow who was the defendant in a libel suit who was subjected to two weeks of grueling cross-examination in a pre-trial deposition. The other side’s lawyers probed his private life in grim detail. And in that case he was dealing with an American court, the plaintiff was guilty as hell, and he was telling the truth!
The same is true for any other person or entity associated with the site, including Byrne’s loyal hatchet person Judd Bagley, a former company spokesman who was moved back to Overstock in late 2010, and former message board stalker Evan Karpak [sic], who remains a principal of Deep Capture LLC and was, inexplicably, not named in the lawsuit. An oversight, I’m sure, that can be rectified in due course.
In Canadian courts, the usual burden is reversed and the defendant has to prove the truth of the libelous statements. Good luck, Mark.”
Weiss was apparently responding to a recent post by Byrne at Investor’s Hub, where he responds to the British Columbia SC order and cites a July 25 2011 executive order by Obama blocking the property of transnational criminal organizations, as well as a 2002 article about Vancouver stock scams that mentions the promoter tangentially in connection to the halting of a penny stock operation called 800America.com.
Weiss contends that this response itself may violate the BC Supreme Court’s injunction against Byrne et. al. and the site.
Gary Weiss is a corrupted hack (former Business Wire) journalist who would rather lie than eat, it seems. He has used so many aliases (“sockpuppets”) in his smear campaigns against anyone alleging the existence of abusive naked short selling, that I imagine there are some mornings he wakes up and it takes him a while to recall who is supposed to be that particular day.
For a while, he posed as “Tom Sykes” with a separate financial commentary website which pretty much mirrored Gary’s contentions, except for all the insertions where Tom is congratulating Gary (himself) on his fine work. Judd Bagley proved they were the same person. But, there are many, MANY more than just the exposed Tom Sykes.
BTW, Gary Weiss also congratulated Barry Minkow for his fine work prior to his conviction for posing as a preacher, then taking their church donations and through his phony “Fraud Discovery Institute” used the church money for short-and-distort racketeering. Nice guy, eh?
I’ve got a feeling most of Gary’s friends fall in the same category of “admirable people”, LOL! Gary was even caught doing his naked short selling shill work from computers WITHIN the DTCC. Yet, this obvious crook still freely roams the streets as he works on his next hatchet job for his short-and-distort racketeering “benefactors”. Surely justice will catch up with him.
BTW, he’s been rather silent on Raging Bull since it was noted that a poster who seemed to reflect Gary’s sentiments exactly as using the name “medchal” until it was pointed out that Medchal is a city in India from which his wife hails. Mere coincidence? If so, why the sudden stop in posting? LOL!
Deep Capture repeatedly fabricates stories about anyone who has ever slighted or perceived to have slighted Patrick Byrne, the founder and CEO of Overstock.com.
Overstock has led the public on a decade plus long campaingn of bad accounting, while they have blamed others for their problems.
Many of Deep Capture’s victims are residents of the United States. Sueing someone for libel in the United States is a very expensive and difficult endeavor. However in Canada, libel laws are much more strict. The burden of proof is on the defendant as opposed to the plaintiff. The comments in question offered no reasonable basis in fact, and hence a Canadian Judge ordered that the site be taken down.
No conspiracy here. Just a case of Patrick Bynre and Mark Mitchell fabricating a story about someone who resides in a country with tough libel laws.
My hope is that this is the end of Deep Capture. For too long the world has turned a blind eye to a group of internet thugs who fabricate stories, and stalk their critics in the name of an elaborate ruse to hide the activities of a man who sees the law only as a suggestion.
As a vicitm of these thugs, I can say that it is high time that this ended.
Hi The_Truth,
You have taken a lot of time to write this, so let me not delete it as just a troll from the short side. Point by point.
1. Fabricate = make up.
Deep Capture was loaded with painstakingly collected evidence, in the forms of signed documents, emails with IP addresses visible and confirmed, taped conversations, statistical analysis. That you use the term suggests to me that you are simply making things up.
2. Grudge match. Byrne is the one who didn’t use Goldman in his IPO way back when. So if anyone has a grudge it is the short-seller-bankster mafia.
His presentations about NSS do not refer to Overstock alone but to dozens of other companies. There are at least twenty names that I’ve seen mentioned as contributors to their data, some in very high positions, all well qualified in the area, besides which there are dozens of anonymous contributors.
And that’s just the people on their site. I know they worked with regulators and investigators off-site as well.
3. Who had a grudge? If you go back and look at the records, the journalists in question were doing very unethical things, colluding with hedge-funds who held short positions in companies to pass off as journalism their negative opinions. That is proved beyond a doubt.
Look at the wikipedia manipulation. That’s not just Byrne saying it happened. Dozens of other sites recorded and verified it.
Sorry. Your post doesn’t hold water.
True, the guy seems to have a short temper and uses too much colorful language, but remember these are journalists who were trying to destroy his company and throw his employees out of work, destroy his shareholders, literally stalking him, trying to steal his medical records, tapping his girl friend’s phone, breaking into the premises of people they wanted to find out more about.
These guys aren’t poor little writers. They have some of the richest hedge funds and businessmen around behind them. Steinhardt, Milken, Cramer, Miilberg Weiss..these guys don’t have 1000 dollar/hr suits to intimidate?
And these journalists are the highest paid in the print media, they make money on the side as analysts and they have the power of the biggest names in the newspaper industry behind them.
They are quoted directly (taped) threatening to crush Byrne with ink and money. They have Russian mafia ties, some of them. They have the government’s ear.
It’s Byrne, standing up for small investors and savers, who’s the little guy here. It’s not like the establishment or Buffett is in his corner. They’re not. They’re in Milken and Cramer and Bernanke’s corner.
Frankly, I think a lot of this was just envy and partisanship. The guys is on the right, he’s rich and he’s Catholic. And he writes and thinks better than they do and is better qualified and speaks several languages.
That’s about as opposite the typical journalistic profile as you can be. Easy target for envy and resentment.
I don’t know anything about his business, but from what I’ve read, the accounting problem looks minor and no more than what lot’s of CEOs do.
He probably couldn’t keep track of something because of fighting this issue for years..and the intimidation and lawsuits filed. and if the SEC kept going after him over it, it’s probably a sign they were trying to intimidate him because of the suit. The SEC is terribly captured from all accounts.
4. How were you victimized? Why don’t you put your name down and the specifics?
One person wrote to this site five times with different IP addresses pretending to be five people with five criticisms.
Let’s get real.
If you were really wronged, give me the specifics and let me read up about it.
Anonymous stories with no proof don’t amount to anything except trolling.
5. I am extremely sorry that the financial journalists instead of resigning, just dig themselves in and spin the stories even more. It is wretched beyond belief. My hope is the newspaper industry collapses and they are forced to get an honest job. Considering the way they smear people, they should take up house painting.
Is Deepcapture’s material cached somewhere so it can be accessed despite the site being down?
Thanks for your reply from yesterday. Found a few sites that published some of Mitchell’s book, but nothing beyond that.
Check the Internet Archive. I’m sure someone said most of it was there, unless that’s been removed as well.
I’ll try to find out more.
Byrne is like Diogenes swinging a lantern in broad daylight.
Not an honest person to be found….
Lepers like weiss, a corrupt ‘financial media’, scum like chanos, einhorn, and herb greenberg hiss out lies and venom in equal proportions.
God help the average man if Byrne’s case, RICO or otherwise, does not prevail.
Blue Monday, New Order
“Deep Capture was loaded with painstakingly collected evidence, in the forms of signed documents, emails with IP addresses visible and confirmed, taped conversations, statistical analysis.”
I’m sorry but this simply isn’t accurate. In the filing of the lawsuit, Nazaralli asked for evidence that he was indeed affiliated with Al-Queda, and the Mafia. Mark Mitchell not only refused to provide any, but tried to recruit him as a source.
Mark Mitchell simply made up the fantastic stories regarding this individual. A Canandian Judge agreed and had the site shut down.
#2 I hate to break it to you but there is no credible evidence that NSS is the scourge that Byrne claims it is.
Look at who screams the loudest about NSS conspiracies. It’s usually crappy or fraudulent companies like CKM Diamonds. Do me a favor, next time you see a company or companies claiming to be victims of NSS conspriacies take a look at the company’s finacials. Do they actually have a promising business? Or are they losing money hand over fist trying to sell pet products over the internet?
#3 “Who had a grudge? If you go back and look at the records, the journalists in question were doing very unethical things, colluding with hedge-funds who held short positions in companies to pass off as journalism their negative opinions. That is proved beyond a doubt.”
There is just one problem with this argument. Patrick Byrne to my knowledge has NEVER credibly refuted anything reported by the financial journalists that he so despises. His MO is to attack the journalists personally by claiming that they are in some sort of league with hedge funds.
Never does he attack the argument or facts presented and that’s a clear logical falacy. Attacking the arguer as opposed to the argument is a clear intent to distract from the argument presented and move the conversation to the argument.
#4 Sorry but I don’t give my personal information to anonymous conspriacy nuts just because they think I am a troll.
You will just have to take my word that I was harrassed and stalked by a member of Deep Capture’s team. These actions were reported to the SEC and if they reoccur will be reported to the Utah police.
Finally I can tell you that Overstock has had to restate it’s financials five times. They are the only, company that I know of to restate a restatement.
The most recent “accounting error”, wasn’t an error but more likely an attempt to disguise a quarterly loss into a profit. This is NOT something that “every CEO does”, unless they want to end up in jail.
If it was an innocent minor error, then why exactly did Byrne fight tooth and nail and fire his auditors to keep from correcting the error.
So lets sum up.
#1 Patrick Byrne runs a failing business. If he wasn’t the son of a legendary business executive he would not be as rich as he is.
#2 There is NO evidence that financial journalists reported falsehoods about him because they didn’t like that he was rich smart and catholic. If that was the case, then what is the refutable fact or facts that were reported by these journalists and/or bloggers?
#3 The overwhelming evidence is that Patrick Byrne just couldn’t take the idea that he was running an awful business. Instead he sought to attack his attackers through the internet, in a chicken yellow manner.
By the way, can’t wait to see these supposed tapes proving that financial journalists had ties to the Russian Mafia. Hint, they don’t exist.
“Is Deepcapture’s material cached somewhere so it can be accessed despite the site being down?”
As part of the judge’s order Deep Capture cannot come up in any web searches, even it’s cache. Google, risks contempt of court if it does.
By the way MB. Here are the full comments of Dan Colarusso at the SABEW meeting that nutcases like yourself constantly refer to. Predictably all that ever gets played is the end of the “crush you” comment.
It’s quite a different comment when taken in context.
http://www.talkingbiznews.com/?p=788
1. Byrne’s business at least hasn’t taken any government hand outs like Goldman Sachs has.
And it’s still afloat, while the CEO seems to spend half his time fighting wall street.
Speaks well of its viability.
2. Bill Gates wouldn’t be where he was if he weren’t born to his father…and born in the US> True of practically everyone
3. Did you see from Tyler Durden’s report that Chanos has nonpublic information relayed to him by Paulson of GS while Paulson was in Treasury? Seems to back up exactly what Byrne was saying.
Chanos was part of the crowd in with Spitzer and GS who were attacking selected companies, exactly as he said they were.
4. Altaf has been linked to really shady stuff by a three journalists before Mitchell.
I have every reason to believe that the DOJ rank and file follow DC closely.
Is that hard headed enough for you?
Calling people names like nutcases or conspiracy theorists is very unpersuasive…
So far the conspiracists are winning hands down on every story.
1. I said torture was n’t isolated but a calculated policy at the highest levels, in 2004-05
In 2006, that was proved\
2. I said women were being tortured
2. Proved
3. In 2005 I wrote that the housing market would collapse severely.
It did
4. In 2006 said Hank Paulson and GS had their colleagues all over governments all over the world and that they were manipulatin the market.
They were. GS is being prosecuted now in 2011
When I wrote it, I was the only one who said it and got the cold shoulder because of it.
5. In 2007 I said indices were being manipulate to induce panic.
Now everyone knows it.
6. In 2008 I said TARP was a power grab and corrupt to the t.
Now Paulson is being charged with just that
7. In 2008 I said banks were cannibalizing each other and consolidating power.
7. Now everyone wants to break up the banks
8. In 2009 I wrote about the connections of Evercore and Blackrock to swine flu..and to the public debates on debt. Now everyone talks about it
9. In 2009, I said the BIS, and fsb were the centers of power
Now everyone recognizes it
10. Check what I wrote about Assange and dozens of other stories earlier than most…
My conspiracy theories seem to be better than your realistic analysis, eh?
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To recap MB-
#1 Part one of your analysis shows that you have very little knowledge of business. You claim that because Overstock wasn’t involved with TARP that it is more viable than Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s greatest brands.
Yet OSTK shows that it has lost $258M in it’s life and is on the verge of bankruptcy. Yet Goldman has earned over $58B. How can OSTK be a better business or even comparable.
#2 You compare Bill Gates to Patrick Byrne which is laughable. Both came from wealthy families and are founders of public companies but the comparison ends there. Byrne founded a company that isn’t profitable and is being sued by the State of California for ripping off it’s customers. Microsoft on the other hand, earns $7B+ a quarter. To parapharse the late Lloyd Benson Byrne ain’t no Bill Gates.
#3 Without any attribution you state that “other reporters” have reported on Nazzaralli’s shady dealings. Therefor you surmise that anything that Mark Mitchell wrote about him must be true. Unfortunately the law doesn’t work that way. You don’t have the right to print lies about someone regardless of their background. Mitchell characterized Nazzaralli as an arms dealer and someone with connections to BCCI, Al-Queda and the Mob. He made it up and he’s going to pay for it as well he should. Just about everything on that site was made up and that’s why it was shut down.
#4 You finally make a littany of conspiracy theories that you have supposedly made in the past that turned out to be true. You make no link to where you originally made these predictions so they like ex-post facto analysis to me and not terribly impressive. Besides, given how you clearly mischaracterized the speech by the Daily News business, you have probably mischaracterized much of that as well.
Just remember, Patrick Byrne is a con-artist content on blamming others for his own misfortune. With his stock at all time lows and the jaws closing in on him, it’s beginning to look as though it is all over.
@The Truth
Actually, I have plenty of knowledge of business.
And of sound arguments. Ad hominem isn’t a part of the latter.
I said, if you’d read, that trashing Overstock for being such a loser of a business, is a bit excessive. It’s viable, and without government funds, at a time when even the biggest names are going under.
Goldman Sachs has a brand, yes. Branding is a form of brainwashing. Having a brand doesn’t mean either quality or viability. Go check how many brands have gone under. GS should have gone under but didn’t because it has government connections all over the world. I suggest you read the history of GS written by someone other than former employees. It is rife with grossly unethical business practices and corrupt dealings.
Bill Gates, whose company I have researched for a couple of articles (Licensed to Bill) made use of the government to enforce his patents, used the entire corporate state complex when it suited him, was hardly original and bought up the technology of other smaller companies. If I could I would avoid every microsoft product. Most of them do not have the quality of much cheaper products. As it is, I only use windows and not much else.
I didn’t attribute in that post, because I’ve linked the articles several times. If you knew anything about the story or were objective, you’d know who the writers were. They include Christopher Byron, who was also sued, despite writing a very thoroughly researched piece. The suit was part of a pattern of intimidation. Please look it up.
I didn’t link, because it’s my blog, and if you’re interested, all my articles are there for all to read
For the terminally illiterate and rude, check the page entitled GOLDMAN SACHS ARTICLES.
I am not obliged to take time out each time I write to link articles already on the web and on my site, prominently displayed and linked in detail on that page, and on the ABOUT page, and on other pages, as well as easily accessible through the SEARCH FUNCTION.
Calling people con artists doesn’t make them one.
If DC’s material was ibelous, Nazeralli has a chance to make that stick in court.
However, I don’t think that they mentioned Nazeralli as a king-pin, as you put it.
I think Mitchell used roughly the same language the other journalists used.
Re – jurisdiction. There is nothing unusual about focusing one’s first line of defense against questions about jurisdiction and forum. Makes for a quick conclusion to things.
Nor is there anything unusual about not talking about a case or publicizing it when you just got a contempt of court order for doing just that.
Hank Paulson
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rajiva/rajiva10.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/09/20/putting-lipstick-on-an-aig/
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rajiva/rajiva11.html
http://dissidentvoice.org/June06/Rajiva06.htm
Gold Price manipulation
http://dissidentvoice.org/June06/Rajiva08.htm
Iraqi women and torture
http://dissidentvoice.org/July2004/Rajiva0727.htm
Emergence of the police state
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/new_centennial_review/v006/6.1rajiva.html
http://dissidentvoice.org/Dec05/Sandronsky1217.htm
Wikileaks questionable
http://dissidentvoice.org/Dec05/Sandronsky1217.htm
Climate gate and wiki manipulation
http://mindbodypolitic.org/2009/11/21/climate-gate-hacked-emails-sets-blogosphere-on-fire/
Journalists who wrote about Nazerali before (and were sued too) – Lee Webb, Chris Byron
(and a couple of others I’ll add later)
I diddn’t see where they made any kind of definitive case against Nazerali, but I am not sure that is all that is needed for a successful libel case.
My guess is that the case will be settled.
Also, if you are too lazy to google material or use the search function on this blog, or check the prominently displayed tabs marked ARTICLES, GOLDMAN SACHS ETC., that is not my problem.
If you want to see the site that was taken down, try here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20101224071036/http://www.deepcapture.com/about-deep-capture/