“I’m Not a Cokehead” and Other Truths from Patrick Byrne, CEO
WARNING: THIS MAN RUNS A PUBLIC COMPANY.
I agree that CEO’s who spend time worrying about shorts or obsessing about shorts are fools. And that most of the CEOs who tangle with shorts are crooks…
I believe there’s been a plan since we were in our teens to destroy our stock, drive it down to $6 to $10…
These are the folks I’m going to talk about….Leon Black I’ve put in there just because he’s a well-known financier hedge fund guy. Got nothing to say about him. Sort of putting him in as an example of a — just somebody in a hedge fund…
Jim Caruthers is an interesting fellow. He’s up at Eastborne Capital, north of San Francisco. Eastborne has an “E” at the end. It’s funny because there’s a fellow holding himself out in a nearby location by the name of Jim Karruthers, with a slightly different spelling, holding himself out as a private investigator from Eastborn Investigations, no “E” at the end. I know that couldn’t be this Jim Caruthers, because that would be a felony for a person to hold himself out as a PI when he’s not. And that PI has a very interesting relationship with a certain lawyer in Detroit who has some very odd practices that maybe we’ll have time to get back to…
Kevin Ingram was a prominent fellow in the late 1990’s in Wall Street. He left Wall Street, started a dot com. I think it was crashing. He got caught attempting to sell Stinger missiles or obtain Stinger missiles for some Pakistani ISI agent, who turned out to be undercover feds. In fact, he agreed to work on obtaining a nuclear trigger for them. So he went to the pen for a few years. He’s out now and he’s basically a gopher for some of these folks…
I finally wrote Herb and I said, “Herb, is this some subtle way of approaching me? It’s okay if it is, but I’m just not into that.” He just seemed obsessed with me. Well, oddly enough, he stopped in February, more or less stopped writing about me. And the same week practically he stopped a blog was created by Jeff Matthews who runs Ram Partners. And in my view, I think the assignment got passed from Herb to Jeff…
And somebody, a politically connected investor with the hedge funds calls up the SEC or the DOJ and says hey, you know, “Listen I was just having breakfast with George and Laura and they sends their regards. And by the way, I know a guy on Wall Street who’s come across something you really need to take a look at.” And so then one of the hedge funds goes in, sends somebody in with this white paper and they try to get an investigation started. That’s how the basic system works…
And they turned that into a white paper that said Byrne is tied up Al-Qaeda and terrorism and money laundering and you ought to look at this guy…
I’ll only talk to a Wall Street Journal reporter with a phone on because they’re such crooks…
Well, something else funny happened. My phone went dead, my phone went dead and a message came up in Spanish that said this has been diverted to some telephone company in Mexico and the line was out…
As this went on I started realizing that there was actually some more orchestration here being provided, by what I’m calling here is the Sith Lord…He’s one of the master criminals from the 1980s, and he’s back in business. But I’m not going to. I’ll just call him the master mind today…
So, in the words of Wayne and Garth, “Squeeze me?”
By the way, Carol Remond has something stuck in her craw about the fact, most people I think understood that when I said “those I took baths with” to mean like my cousins and brothers, whatever, girlfriends. She’s calling around and saying that there’s a, Byrne has a gay bathhouse cabal and that’s where this has been organized. Something about the whole bath reference has steamed Carol. My theory is it’s because she’s French…
I put information down there that I was gay. And…I put information down that I was a coke head. Now my apologies to my gay friends, both within and without, outside the company, I don’t mean to equate the two. I don’t care. I’m a libertarian and I don’t care at all. In fact I don’t give a hoot if anyone thinks I’m gay, but I thought that by keeping, by putting that information down on one channel and putting the coke head information down the other channel, I would then know if it leaked…
On the coke head thing, and by the way, I’ve never, with one exception, I’ve never even seen cocaine in my life so in case you’re wondering, no, I’m not a coke head…
I made something up. I said, “I’m going to Venezuela, I’m going to need some bodyguards.” Well, there’s no way he could really say no. And he’s a fine guy. I mean, I don’t envy him. So I went in to see him and he met me, brought a witness and my guess is he was taping it…
So that’s where we are. You may think I’m nuts…. If you think I’m nuts about all this, just ignore. Just ignore me. Just don’t do anything about it…
I like these guys, they’re sort of guys out of a John Grisham novel, real smart, O’Quinn is a great big strapping Texas cowboy. He sued Texas, he sued big tobacco on behalf of Texas and won $17 billion, pocketed a couple of it himself. And now he just funds lawsuits that he thinks has a social purpose. And we met. It was like two lost brothers meeting because we’ve come from very different directions to the same conclusion…
Why not take it to the authorities? Well, to that I say, “The SEC, come on, look at those, the graph of the Miscreants Ball and tell me the SEC is up to taking something like on. They’re up to going after Martha Stewart on a good day. They’re not up to taking on a web like that. They probably are afraid it might cause volatility.”
Did I stutter? Did I stutter or did I say I was going to take this fight to you? Well now you know what I meant. And lastly, the man I’ve identified here as the Sith Lord of this stuff I just say, you know who you are and I hope that this is worth it, because if the feds catch you again, this time they’re going to bury you under the prison. And I’m going to enjoy helping. Those are the words of Doctor Patrick M. Byrne, Chairman and CEO of Overstock.com, reprinted straight out of the conference call transcript announcing a lawsuit against short-sellers.
“Squeeze me?” and “Sith Lord” and “Stinger missiles” and all.
For first-time readers, Overstock.com is a money-losing, internet-based enterprise whose stock is currently recommended as a “BUY” by Legg Mason analyst Scott Devitt and W.R. Hambrecht & Co. analyst Craig Bibb.
Nobody can make that up.
Jeff Matthews I Am Not Making This Up
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.
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