In an Overstock.com quarterly conference call yesterday, CEO Patrick Byrne said he does not post anonymously on internet message boards like the detestable Rahodeb Mackey, a claim Gary Weiss proved fallacious long ago.

What’s interesting about yesterday’s call, which ran for over an hour in the late morning and early afternoon, is that Byrne actually posted under his sobriquet, Hannibal, while the call was in progress. He wrote, “ thanks dude” at 11:43 on the Investor Village message board.

We suspect that the overstock board of directors are all Byrne creations as well. Joseph J. Tabacco, Jr., come on.

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne Posts on Internet During Conference Call [Gary Weiss]

Although Gary Weiss has been on to him months, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne admitted to “pulling a Mackey” last night, writing on the Overstock website that, like Whole Foods CEO John “Rahodeb” Mackey, he posted on company-related message boards pseudonymously.

Byrne’s admission comes in response to this New York Times article, where he told reporters that unlike Mackey, “he never hides his true identity and always signs his name when he posts under his online handle, ‘Hannibal.’” But it appears that Byrne has occasionally let the sobriquet stand alone. Last night, Byrne wrote in an open letter to Times reporter Brad Stone,

Please provide a citation for this claim: "Mr. Byrne said that he never hides his true identity and always signs his name when he posts under his online handle, 'Hannibal'". Is it your claim that I used the words "always" and "never" in some message board post (and if so, please cite that post), or is it your claim that I stated this in our interview? I know for a fact that the claim is false as regards our interview, and believe it to be false with regard to any online posting, but I stand ready to be corrected.

Just how prevalent is this anonymous executive posting phenomena? If you frequent these boards, please share every suspicious nom de plum you come across. Be particularly wary of anagrammed names of an executive’s mother, sister, wife or daughter, famous military commanders and Republican presidents.

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne Admits He Posted Under Pseudonyms [Gary Weiss]
Take 5 With Patrick [Overstock.com]

Against all odds, the story of Overstock continues to get worse. The company has been a laughing stock to almost anyone who can be bothered to think about it anymore. It’s the focus of an SEC investigation. It is run by a chief executive whose name—Patrick Byrne—long ago became synonymous with wacky conspiracy theories. It regularly deploys nasty tactics to defame reporters who dare mention its deterioration. An it’s bleeding directors.

The latest news hit on Thursday when Ray Groves resigned from the board. Groves, who once ran Ernst & Young, was the head of Overstock’s audit committee. He was, in the eyes of some observers, the last and best hope the company had to maintaining a sense of credibility. His departure comes as only the latest of a series of resignations by board members. The past year has seen also seen departures by directors John Fisher and John Byrne, the CEO’s father. When your father bails on your company, you know you are in trouble. Or rather, you would know. Patrick Byrne seems to think it’s a sign of his company's strength. Or something. We’ve long ago given up trying to figure out anything about what goes on inside of Byrne-the-younger’s brain.

But other’s have not. After we took off for the long-weekend, Gary Weiss, Sam Antar and Herb Greenberg all looked into the latest resignation. What’s behind the latest departure? Well, the same thing that was behind the departure of Fischer and Byrne-the-elder: the CEO’s ridiculous “jihad” against the “sith lords” on Wall Street he claims are behind a naked shorting conspiracy that is depressing his company’s stock price.

“In a letter contained in an SEC filing this morning, Groves told the company, ‘My resignation relates to the company's prime broker suit.’ That's Overstock's suit alleging that prime brokers are somehow involved in a naked shorting conspiracy,” Greenberg reports.

[But is it more than the Overstock's lawsuit against prime brokers? Read more after the jump.]

You remember AntiSocialMedia.Net, right? No? Yeah, we were doing out best trying to forget it also. It’s the website hosting what the New York Post describes as "bitter attacks … on the message board critics, accusing them of participating to various degrees in a conspiracy to malign the anti-naked short selling movement that Overstock.com supports."

Well, it turns out that there was very good reason that AntiSocialMedia.Net was supporting the same causes as Overstock.com. It was being anonymously run by Overstock.com’s director of social media Judd Bagley.

Gary Weiss, who has been all over this story, wants to know:

Only one question arises in my mind: What laws were broken? Not "were laws broken?" but "what were the laws that were broken?" The new federal cyberstalking law comes to mind, obviously, but what others? Regulation FD is another good possibility, given the ASM Lie Machine was created after Bagley became a corporate officer. (And speaking of corporate disclosure, shouldn't Overstock file an 8-K disclosing its involvement in ASM?)

Bagley is trying hard to distance himself from his employer, Patrick Byrne, which brought him on as "director of social media" in August with all the fanfare that you and I would use in buying a can of Raid cockroach spray. Nice try, but too late. Byrne himself promoted the site and contributed to it, and has indicated that he has advance knowledge of its disclosures. Once again, Byrne's big mouth has landed him in deep doo-doo.

Judd Bagley Fesses Up [Gary-Weiss.com]

Gary Weiss, the author of Wall Street Versus America, picks some choice excerpts from Overstock.Com CEO Patrick Byrne’s blog and issues a promise to be the internet's personal Patrick Byrne watchdog.

Rest assured that there is no need to actually visit Byrne's blog or stay up late to follow his fave message board (where he was still posting at 8:28 tonight) to keep up to speed on his latest thoughts.

I will personally monitor the dog food, miscreant, bimbo, conspiracy, self-immolation and unfair-press situation, and will post further excerpts as developments warrant.

The (Recent) Wit and Wisdom of Patrick Byrne [Gary-Weiss.Com]

Gary Weiss, author of Wall Street Versus America, listened to the Overstock.Com conference call so you wouldn’t have to. Not surprisingly, CEO Patrick Byrne found time to talk about things other than his company’s $0.78 per share net loss in the second quarter. Things like dastardly short-sellers and how shareholders might prevent them from pushing the value of their stock down even further.

We’ll leave the details for you to read by clicking through to Gary’s blog on the link below. But if you're as lazy as we are on Fridays, you might appreciate skipping right to the conclusion.

Byrne's gambit won't work, by the way. History has proven that the only proven method of pushing up the share prices of bad companies is that they stop being bad. And Byrne just hasn't figured out a way to do that.

Burn! (As DealBreaker cub reporter Bess Levin likes to say.)

Byrne's Latest Gambit
[Gary-Weiss.Com]

Jeff Matthews asks a completely reasonable question: what is going on with the Board of Directors of Overstock.Com? At least a few of the directors seem to be sensible, well-regarded folks. Are they celebrating yesterday’s subpoena news with CEO Patrick Byrne? Or are they just bored with being directors and not really paying attention?

I cannot imagine that being a director at Overstock.Com is boring. To the contrary, shouldn’t being a lightsaber wielding jedi preparing to do battle with the Sith be just about the best job ever?

I mean, what else could a director ask for? Other than a Harley, obviously.

Bored of Directors? [JeffMatthewsIsNotMakingThisUp]

A few months ago, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne got into an exchange with Jeff Matthews about the supposed existence of an Israeli mafia. (This discussion pre-dates his defense against more recent allegations of anti-Semitism.) In a post about the exchange, Matthews points out that Byrne is on record pointing to the "Israeli mob" (presumably among others--Sith Lords, etc.) as one of the conspirators in the alleged naked shorting movement against him. Byrne responds:

Jeff omits precisely the part of the quote that makes the connection, and that is, after I mentioned the Italian, Russian, and Israeli mobs, and the discussed the Russian mob, the interviewer said/asked, "I didn't know Israel had a mob?" To which I replied that, yes it does: for example, it is widely thought to control the US ecstasy trade.

The relevant quote from the transcript of an interview Byrne did with the Christian Financial News Network:

The Israeli mob--in fact I was just reading Ha'aretz, which is an Israeli newspaper, ah, and a very good one, and you can Google this--If you Google "ectasy Israeli mafia" you'll find articles that basically the Israeli mob...is thought to control 75% of the ecstasy trade in the U.S."

Which begs the question: why would Byrne be Googling "ecstasy Israeli mafia" in the first place? Possibly because of this: [From the Salt Lake Tribune, May 26, 2002]

In another Utah case, Holly McDonald-Korth was allegedly receiving shipments of Ecstasy from Antwerp Belgium, according to a search warrant filed by Salt Lake City police investigators... On paper, McDonald-Korth appears nothing like a drug dealer. She was enrolled in private school as a teen and then attended the University of Michigan before graduating with honors from the university of Miami with a degree in finance, according to court documents. After graduation, McDonald-Korth went to work for the Federal Reserve in Washington. The 25-year-old came to Utah 18 months later after obtaining a job as an analyst for Overstock.com

The ecstasy dealer who presents the biggest threat to Overstock isn't, as it turns out an Israeli mobster. It's their current SVP in charge of Overstock Auctions.

Gary Weiss points out that Overstock's Patrick Byrne has been hanging out in the comments section of the Israpundit blog** lately defending himself against charges of anti-Semitism stemming from some commentary he made about Tom Friedman. Then he somehow laterals into a discussion of Jim Cramer and Herb Greenberg talking about him:

I do not think I have ever commented publicly on the Israel-Arab dispute. What I did in one blog was say that, regarding that dispute, Tom Friedman makes a habit of pretending to weigh the evidence, then always takes Israel’s side. I have not said that he is wrong to take Israel’s side, just that the “Let’s see, Arabs, israel, Arabs, Israel…. OK, this time I gotta go with Israel!” routine gets a little old. (As a matter of fact, I think he is sometimes insufficiently pro-Israel for my taste, but that is a logically unrelated point.)

I brought this issue up in the conext of discussing Jim Cramer’s and Herb Greenberg’s endless discussions of me. They run more or less like this (in paraphrase):

Jim: “Byrne might be a good guy!”
Herb: “No he’s a bad guy.”
Jim: “Are you sure? I thought he might be a good guy.”
Herb: “No he’s a bad guy.”
Jim: “OK, you win, he’s a bad guy.”

Over and over every time they discussed me. it reminded me of Friedman. That’s all.

Other people discussed: The General Counsel of Bloomberg, "the guys at Bloomberg", reporter Matt Taibbi, everyone Byrne is suing, Chewbacca, Molly Bloom, James Joyce and Hannibal of Carthage.

** As opposed to the Motley Fool message boards, and the Overstock auction boards, and ... hey, why isn't he commenting here?

$$$ Credit where credit's due: we all have Overstock's Patrick Byrne to thank for making conference calls fun again. But let's face it: they're even better when you record them and have them read by monkeys in wigs and sunglasses. (See also here and here.)

$$$ What's the first result when you type "finance" into Google? Uh... Yahoo! Someone's getting fiiiiiired. [via Going Private]

$$$ The 80,000 volt electric briefcase. Where the hell was this when we were dropping off piles of cash on behalf of Equatoguinean dictators in Dupont Circle for Riggs Bank in '04? Now they tell us! [via BoingBoing]

$$$ The first rule of Hedge Fund Polo Club is that no one talks about Hedge Fund Polo Club.