“Dismissed for Violations”

Well now we know where Patrick got his affidavits.

The affidavits I’m referring to are the documents Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne brandished Joe McCarthy-like during his “Sith Lord” appearance CNBC, claiming proof of a conspiracy between short-sellers and a research firm called Gradient Analytics before reading selective bits from the so-called proof of the so-called conspiracy.

According to today’s New York Post, of the three ex-employees at Gradient who apparently provided the affidavits, two were “dismissed for violations of Gradient’s corporate policy.”

Furthermore, the two worked in “customer-relationship management” at Gradient—which is not exactly the guts of a research shop, where conspiracies of the scale alleged by Byrne might be hatched.

And one of the two “customer-relationship” ex-employees was, according to the Post, fired for “forwarding Gradient’s client list to his personal e-mail account,” and has “filed and lost repeated appeals to claim unemployment benefits.”

Not exactly an Andy Fastow-type eye-witness, if you ask me.

Now that I think of it, when Patrick read from his “Sith Lord” papers on CNBC (I don’t know about you, but I kept waiting for him to say he had in his hand the names of 57 communists now working in the State Department), the phrase that jumped out was the qualifier “it appeared,” which was placed before an allegation of conspiracy between the shorts, Gradient and reporter Herb Greenberg.

There was no first-person “and then I did this” eye-witness account from somebody at the epicenter of the so-called conspiracy—the kind of testimony that put Bernie Ebbers in jail. At least as far as I could tell. And today’s article explains why.

Stay tuned, and read the Post.

Jeff Matthews I Am Not Making This Up

© 2005 Jeff Matthews The content contained in this blog represents the opinions of Mr. Matthews. Mr. Matthews also acts as an advisor and clients advised by Mr. Matthews may hold either long or short positions in securities of various companies discussed in the blog based upon Mr. Matthews’ recommendations.