Did Utah SEC 's Brent Baker cover up for National Taxpayers Union Founder ? : Utah IMC

''I left the SEC in March after 13 years of honorable service because I felt that I could do more good in private practice than I could as a "shackled" SEC attorney. I was right. Check out the lawsuit just filed against certain hedge funds and others at http://www.overstock.com's webpage. Go to the investor relations link and download the conference call from this morning. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.''

Brent Baker on 8/12/2005 (responding to my criticisms on offshorebusiness.com)

http://www.woodburykesler.com

Did ex Utah SEC 's Brent Baker cover up for James Dale Davidson ?

Did ex-SEC attorney Brent Baker who is representing Overstock.com and its CEO Patrick Byrne who unethically and perhaps illegally manipulates his company's own stock, cover up for James Dale Davidson ? Is Byrne's anonymous stock promoter, 'Bob O'Brien' of http://www.ncans.net really James Dale Davidson ?

Dear SEC,

I want to have my say and have this placed in the public records of the SEC as my statement re small companies and the ongoing anti-naked short' scam that is promoted by ncans.net, investigatethesec, faulkingtruth',FinancialWire,(that Senator Bennett cited as his source that 'Global Links' was being 'naked shorted'),et.al..

What I am saying is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth as best as I can decipher it in light of Charles Schwab,Endovasc, James Dale Davidson,attorney John O'Quinn, Judge Ken Reilly, Bellador Group of Dubai,and its Arizona attorney Ron Logan and even the SEC with all it's attorneys and legal knowledge actually withholding as much from me as possible.And of course Stanford Uviversity and researchers Heeschen and Cooke guard their silence as well. I believe this naked short claim is organized crime even with some Beltway connection.I believe that Davidson,founder of the National Taxpayers Union,is behind NCANS just as he was NAANSS.

I HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED SO MUCH EVIL IN MY LIFE.

http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/s72303/tryals121603.htm

Besides robbing me blind, anonymous aliases on Yahoo and ragingbull who are insiders to the scam called 'naked shorting',which you surely know is a scam to divert attention from their illegal pump and dump frauds and possibly money laundering, still yell out my name and occasionally threaten my life including 'Bob O'Brien' on Yahoo. And they have had my email and message board posts deleted so many times, on Yahoo and ragingbull it is a joke when I keep one for very long.All one need do is a google search of 'naanss' to find the whole story from the SEC web pages.My name,amount of losses,etc.And now around the U.S. and world on the indymedias.

By observing ragingbull and the jagh message board I knew a day in advance on February 7 that something would appear in the Washington Post the next day re 'naked shorting' although I didn't know what.Had I known anything about nfi-info.net I would have known something was brewing as well.David Patch seems connected to ncans.net. and 'investigatehesec' and David Patch has a James Dale Davidson connection dating to the illegal pump and dump of gmxx at least.And Porter Stansberry has even recently touted Byrne's Overstock.com on his new website as a victim of 'naked shorting' since Brent Baker failed to convict him,Davidson and Agora Inc. for touting although they or Davidson did much worse by being CEO of Genemax and a substantial shareholder of Endovasc when they touted.Howard Hill who posts on NFI Yahoo has a Davidson connection at least loosely as they posted on the same University of Colorado website in 1999. Same for Alan Newman who are both either ncans connected or they are gurus of the naked short conspiracy of NAANSS, NCANS, investigatethesec,and James Dale Davidson. Coincidence ?

Now why would the ad be placed in the Washington Post anonymously without a Beltway connection and who would dare to do that and address their 'concern' to President Bush anonymously in this post 911 era without fear of having the CIA,or the FBI,or the Secret Service banging on their door or doing a thourough investigation of ncans.net? THEY MUST HAVE CONNECTIONS,DON'T YOU THINK ?

Why won't the SEC provide me with documents that pertain to the Endovasc fraud without a lot of expense or need for an attorney as the frauds the SEC has allowed to continue have eaten up 100% of my 'investment'.I speak English but do not know how to ask in legalese.According to recent newspaper articles on the SEC it appears keeping me in the dark is purposeful.When I asked Barbara Ray if I might have a copy of David P Summers letter to Dallas-Fort Worth SEC in 2004 she told me I would have to apply through foia.How do I do that ?You are all lawyers so why impede me or others who invested in a given company that loses 100% of a shareholders money yet continues in business and continues to use the internet to tout ? Why not help me ? Why help them ?

For instance you may by now have the Schwab transactions from the anonymous Endovasc account set up in May 2002 to deposit 'up to 30 million shares' into that one Schwab 'select clients' account! I am sure you have seen the pdf file with the letter from Schwab threatening me with legal action for complaining and the shareholder agreement I am mentioning haven't you ? This is in the article 'Charles Schwab and share money laundering' whose link is below.If Charles Schwab were an honest broker and did not host illegal pump and dump accounts,or least did not do so at the time they owned Schwab Capital, as the SEC has already documented, they might have fought the naked short claim to save their reputation and retrieved assets stolen from myself and probably other Schwab clients who made the mistake of investing in fraudulent penny stocks,be it Endovasc or others that accused them of naked shorting to divert attention from illegal pump and activity and their own Schwab account used to conduct it.

At the very least they would not have felt an obligation to cover up for the pump and dump criminals who they hosted and let me be told by them and 'famed trial attorney O'Quinn' that I was being 'naked shorted' by Charles Schwab !

Charles Schwab and share-money laundering :

http://sfbay.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/1747107.php

This was all done after public press releases paid by Endovasc were claiming a legit 'reverse split' in June 2002 that should have left less than 3 million shares in existence !! Schwab and probably Americans using their Schwab- LOM account,you can rest assured,are very pleased that you are allowing them to keep this illicit pump and dump account concealed.And yet you both know I have a legal time restraint on my discovery.And it's been years. And I must try to do so without money, a real constraint, wouldn't you say ? One lawyer swallowed my legal budget in one sitting.Endovasc frauds are laughing all the way to the bank,or boiler room as the case may be.Although even boiler rooms are hopefully shying away from them now.

I believed Endovasc and their and attorney John O'Quinn's claim of 'naked shorting' and was conned into buying a 'cert' from them through former SEC employee Alexander Walker's Nevada Agency and Trust Co. by way of Charles Schwab who would never even discuss the issue while Endovasc and attorney John O'Quinn bravely,now I know fraudulently,paid for a Businesswire press release stating Schwab was 'naked shorting' immediately after what I now believe was an illegal pump and dump from a Charles Schwab account.

Also SEC attorney Ungar has already discovered that Schwab has a history of providing illegal pump and dump accounts for LOM clients which is probably where the 'up to 30 million shares' were deposited because that is or was a James Dale Davidson connected group.Strangely this is something that Schwab's Beltway located Mantas Inc. anti-money laundering 'experts' should have detected long before Mr.Ungar ! Also vFIN, that Endovasc has another undisclosed involvement with, has a LOM connection coincidentally.

And as you know so well James Dale Davidson touted and promoted Endovasc in late 2002,(without ever disclosing his interest and fraudulently claiming he traded a nicotine patent that doesn't exist for an unsaid,(and unreported,in SEC filings,number of Endovasc shares),when well over one million shares were 'traded' per day for a couple of weeks.And then Endovasc and attorney O'Quinn had the nerve to say Schwab was naked shorting Endovasc rather than the truth, Schwab was hosting an illegal pump and dump account for them !! Although only a 'small company' and even after the 'reverse split' that increased insiders shares 40 times in value over night,even though the shares only reached a bit over 3 dollars in value at the height of Davidson's pump and dump of late 2002,over a million shares were being traded everyday.Even this small company ran a substantial fraud.

Other important documentation that it appears that the SEC in Dallas-Fort Worth has is the original letter from 'Dr.' David P Summers from late 2003 acknowledging the Bellador Group boiler room deal with Kuala Lumpur to Dubai connections!! How could this management, even if they are low enough to rip off their fellow Americans,do post 911 deals with a boiler room with Kuala Lumpur and Dubai connections ?

And how, when it has even been acknowledged by Bellador Group and their Arizona attorney,are they allowed to keep it out of SEC filings !? Why does the government and the SEC not care ? Unaudited shares in Kuala Lumpur are probably used for money laundering !

Yes the letter released to the public on the internet has many misspellings and confusing changes to the original. But the Dallas-Fort Worth SEC officials names are correct and are SEC officials. Balador I now know is Bellador Group of Kuala Lumpur not Arizona. But I now know their attorney Ron Logan is in Arizona and he,like attorney O'Quinn,has made false claim of 'naked shorting' as well to cover up the shares sold or money laundered with Endovasc shares through his Bellador boiler room clients of Kuala Lumpur !!

You see this was infighting between the fraudulent Dr. David P Summers and Dwight Cantrell and Robert Johnson who seem to have authorized the boiler room deal not found in SEC filings and it appears Judge Ken Reilly who has claimed he was not on the Endovasc Compensation Committee was in on it with them.He has never denounced Cantrell or Summers for allowing his name to be placed in SEC filings as a member of that committee yet - contradicting SEC filings - he claims he never was,in email communication to me !!!

What gets me most is the SEC Dallas-Fort Worth had them and instead appear to have covered up !!!And you, the SEC sat by and let them tell me I was being naked shorted while in truth illegal pumps and dumps and,I believe money laundering itself, was occuring in terrorist suspect regions,Kuala Lumpur at least,while the SEC looked the other way!

I believe the letter to the SEC that appeared on ragingbull.com and elsewhere on the internet by David P Summers in late 2003 to Mr. Tom Baudhuin and voice mail to Barbara Ray of the Dallas Fort Worth office of the SEC was indeed real.And I do believe it is the SEC's responsibility to audit shares and get clear reports from the transfer agents and the company management. If not,you tell me who does or who will ? And if not,doesn't this encourage not only illegal pump and dump scams but also money laundering ?

LETTER TO SEC FROM DAVID P SUMMERS THAT APPEARED ON INTERNET IN LATE 2003 :

http://www.offshorebusiness.com/message_board_detail.asp?id=11541&page=1

http://www.investmentbanter.com/showthread.php?t=21076

And I of course didn't have a clue when I put down my money in 2001 that Stanford would license a patent to a scam involved in ongoing illegal pump and dump activty with a number of scammy offshore crooks the SEC allowed to operate and with a transfer agent who should have been closed down years ago.Yet just look at these links - everyone knew but me and did nothing about it.Now even Mr.Lambiase of NASAA (due to LETTER WRITING OF David Patch who still hangs out on the ragingbull JAGH message board)seems to be defending such scams as victims of 'naked shorting' without checking facts.In fact Endovasc was fraudulently claiming Antonio Colombo would conduct human trials in a couple of months.

Even NASAA knew about Endovasc cyberfraud in 1999 although they would not make fraudulent claim of being victim of 'naked shorting' until they became involved with James Dale Davidson and his Agora Inc.and NAANSS and 'famed'trial attorney O'Quinn'.

http://www.nasaa.org/Issues___Answers/Legislative_Activity/Testimony/740.cfm

http://216.26.162.80/message_board_detail.asp?id=13145&page=18

How was I to know Alexander Walker was a very well paid insider to the fraud until a year after the fraudulent reverse split and pump and by James Dale Davidson through Agora and who knows what other fraudulent tout sites or mail fraud ? Mr.Walker was given a couple hundred thousand dollars in freely dumpable shares as an insider. That's good pay for a transfer agent wouldn't you say and that's only what's declared and he 'worked' with Endovasc fraudsters and many others for years.Everyone was working together to defraud retail customers ,from Schwab to Endovasc to the transfer agent to James Dale Davidson to Bellador Group of Kuala Lumpur and Dubai and I believe LOM of Bermuda as well! And yes there were others before that as Endovasc crimnial management have run several illegal pump and dumps over the years.

And these insiders to penny stock fraud and pump and dump and I believe money laundering promote shells and promises and nothing more.And they complain about the DTC but do they ever complain about their transfer agent in regards to this supposed 'naked shorting' ? Of course not.It is these well paid transfer agents who conceal the float so they can dump and manipulate the shares and share price endlessly while they tout these worthless frauds.

James Dale Davidson had a connection to most and I believe perhaps all of them as it now turns out that this founder of the Beltway's National Taxpayers Union does do business in Dubai or at least Amenni that he is recently connected to and Bellador Group he may be connected to do.Is it his Beltway connections that keep him free to defraud another day ad infinitum ? And to do deals in terrorist suspect regions with unaudited shares of U.S.penny stocks and thus unaudited money in this post 911 era ?

And to further deceive,as did Bellador Group's attorney Ron Logan who,like attorney O'Quinn,made either a fraudulent claim,or a very uneducated one,that Endovasc et.al. were victims of 'naked shorting'when no one was auditing the shares and thus no one was auditing the flow of money ? And the the only way they can lie about being 'naked shorted' is when the SEC is lax about auditing the size of the float and the criminals who run these shells called companies know it.Can you imagine an attorney for a boiler room, who doesn't even have his clients declare their shares in a U.S. company, dare claiming the unaudited shares are 'naked shorted' ? I guess you could and easily do nothing about it.

Had I not given up all privacy in order to seek the truth to the extent I could on the internet because the SEC,in its wisdom decided I did not exist and the only way to gather any information was to stay online where I was deefrauded in the first place,I would never have received email from an individual informing me that Bellador Group of Kuala Lumpur was using Endovasc shares in a boiler room in Kuala Lumpur.

The SEC Dallas Fort Worth has that information from the David P Summers letter sitting hidden from defrauded Endovasc investors like me at this very moment ! If not do a google search,'endovasc scam warning bellador'.Funny when I contacted them in 2004 Barbara Ray who Summers sent the voice mail to was polite but said I would have to apply under foia which I just didn't know how to do.For me a letter begging in English is as much as I know how to do.

But the strange thing, that at the time I thought was a good thing,was that Brent Baker of Utah SEC contacted me immediately after my communication with Barbara Ray.Funny you all have such a good grapevine yet investors can never seem to reach you as individuals by email.And now in retrospect if you consider 'Bob O'Brien' has a James Dale Davidson connection, Brent Baker is actually working for those who defrauded me in in 'naked short'' scam in the first place.And Porter Stansberry of James Dale Davidon's Agora who Baker failed to convict now has a new penny stock tout website on which he insinuates Byrne's Overstock.com is a victim of 'naked shorting' !

So the original letter I presume the Dallas Fort Worth office still has does say 'Bellador' of 'Kuala Lumpur' rather than 'Balador'of 'Arizona',but Bellador Group or http://www.belladorgroup.com does have an Arizona connection by way of Ron Logan their U.S.atorney.Is that not correct ?And they are accessible even now to U.S. CUSTOMERS FROM KUALA LUMPUR OR DUBAI BY WORLD WIDE INTERNET ! So the SEC allows these frauds you have the nerve to call 'small companies' to go on and they are criminal organizations, you must know it !!!

But not all claim to be 'naked shorted' to further compound and confuse the fraud.Endovasc had already participated in many offshore schemes before James Dale Davidson and the Schwab account entered the scene.I had no idea,I thought I was investing in a U.S.company with a promising Stanford patent !

Is Arizona attorney Ron Logan aiding international penny stock fraud ?

http://arizona.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/30821.php

And although they may well have many scam websites they utilise two main websites for their frauds,i.e.-ragingbull and Yahoo.You know that,John Reed Stark knows that yet you do nothing.I believe your internet fraud unit busted some kid for touting in 1999,that's about all I remember about its 'work'. Oh yes and a phone tout scam more recently.Many foreigners get in on the rip off of Americans and retail investers as well. While Endovasc management,as one example, signed the shady deals that also advantaged them is was us retail purchasers paying an additional 3% to buy or sale who were ripped off.

And yet James Dale Davidson of NTU who has pulled off more penny scams than have ever been compiled is only a few kilometers away from the SEC and from Georgetown's James Angel in Alexandria,Virginia,who did a scammy videoinfomercial for ncans.And yet he claimed he'd never heard of James Dale Davidson or a fraud using 'naked short' to mask illegal pump and dump activity.He couldn't,when asked, prove a single case or point to a single example of naked shorting destroying or harming a company either,by the way !

James Dale Davidson has been the mastermind of the use of naked short claim over the internet for fraud and yet James Angel does a fraudulent video infomercial using Georgetown University for 'credibility' and yet claims to never have heard of Davidson nor any penny stock scam using naked shorting to cover it up ! Speaking of which how do you Beltway insiders keep a straight face when securities
connected 'experts' like James Angel and Senator Bob Bennett go around endorsing penny stock scams whose only known or given address is a striptease club,the Cheetah Club,in Las Vegas ? And at that,besides being known for bribing San Diego officials is the only strip club I know that was investigated by the FBI under the Pariot Act ??!!

THIS IS A MASSIVE PENNY STOCK FRAUD ERRONEOUSLY CALLED 'NAKED SHORTING' THAT IS REALLY INSIDER PUMP AND DUMP AND MANIPULATION OF VERY REAL SHARES OFTEN WITH THE COLLUSION OF COMPANY INSIDERS AND TRANSFER AGENTS SUCH AS ALEXANDER WALKER .

Penny stock frauds like Davidson and others select their transfer agents for their lack of ethics and they add the 'buy certs' to their naked short scam because that further compromises investors they are out to scam by tieing up their shares and making conversion difficult and time consuming.They on the other hand are experienced in certs because of their experience with penny stock companies and buying super discounted or free shares from them.I was just doing a google search of 'electronic counterfeit shares',the term may be a James Davidson creation repeated over and over on inernet scam sites and message boards like a mantra by his followers.

I am most amazed the SEC did not have an official warning out long ago that the naked shorting claim was being used for massive penny stock fraud and illegal pump and dump ops and probably money laundering because those are the facts !!!
And these insiders to penny stock fraud and pump and dump and I believe money laundering promote shells and promises and nothing more.And they complain about the DTC but do they ever complain about their transfer agent in regards to this supposed 'naked shorting' ? Of course not.It is these well paid transfer agents who conceal the float so they can dump and manipulate the shares and share price endlessly while they tout these worthless frauds.

I have commented endlessly regarding small companies in general and Endovasc of Montgomery,Texas in particular to no avail.I was the 'wolfblitzzer0' on ragingbull that gave Michael Zwebner of UCSY an excuse to sue the real,Wolf Blitzer and CNN on the phoney excuse that somehow that alias was connected to them.Mr.Zwebner is a British -Israeli citizen connected to a Palestinian, Mohamed Hadid,among others,who may or may not have U.S. citizenship.That is neither here nor there.

What Mr.Zwebner has in common with Endovasc is the 'transfer agent',Alexander Walker,and his 'NATCO' of Nevada who has been both transfer agent and management in many of his
various 'failed companies'.I say failed cynically because someone(s) made millions dumping shares and the U.S. and the SEC ignored it and have maintained the Reg S and other stock schemes that allow or even encourge this fraud,and I believe,money laundering as well.

And Michael Zwebner's 'companies' have 'lost' untold millions of dollars perhaps over 100 million.No one,and particularly the SEC,keeps track and have sent much or most of that 'lost' money on worthless shell companies he promotes offshore !! Some have claimed Mr.Zwebner has been involved with money laundering,I don't know,but he has certainly been allowed to run illegal pump and dump operations in the U.S.for years that defraud Americans and send their money overseas never to be seen again.

And to cynically use false prs claiming sales to the U.S. miltary in Iraq and to use the tsunami victims to issue false prs all to pump and dump.I can't imagine you let this go on.All under 'small companies'.

And this is only one example as I have come to realise the depth of the fraud between offshore money laundering of illegal pump and dump schemes using U.S.penny stock shares and the facade of being small companies or 'early stage development' companies.Arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi and GenesisIntermedia comes to mind as well.And there are more,so many many more.

I had no idea.But I'm sure this is nothing new to you.No legit company can find a place at otcbb and get funding for all the frauds crowding the boards and slick pump and dump artists whose whole purpose is fraud.

The problem is that these people use U.S.penny stocks for illegal pump and dump activities to defraud the very Americans or others who 'invest' retail in U.S.penny stocks,who welcome them to the U.S.in the first place. These people have international connections but I do say, in Zwebner's case,he should not nor never run any U.S. company based on past history of business failures,to be optimistic,in England alone !!!

One lesson to be learned from this is to never rely on the Beltway's Mantas Inc. to oversee anti-money laundering or anti-pump and dump operations unless you want them covered up ! How was I to know Charles Schwab, my 'broker',was hosting a pump and account for Endovasc insiders and that was why they would not answer one single question I had about 'naked shorting'?

Endovasc as well as the whole penny stock stock mafia, particularly those who ran the 'naked short' or supposed 'ant-naked short'scam, should have been in jail long ago for laundering money in terrorist suspect regions. Instead I have a feeling they will all be sending you their complaints about 'naked short selling'and how they are just little 'mom and pop' investors or companies.

Mary Campbell Helburn and 'Bob O'Brien' and the whole unidentified gang who run ncans out of a website with a Wells Fargo account in San Diego and whose only known address is a striptease joint investigated by the FBI under the Patriot Act will surely be lobbying you and congressmen in mass.

And this is who Senator Bob Bennett of Utah,and James Angel of Georgetown lend their credibility to.And this is who Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com supports and funds,even though he admits he's not being harmed by 'naked shorting, sort of.

The sad truth is many real small businesses who really could use the capitalization they squander either never get off the ground or can't get the loans or have to struggle with the loans to buy or produce a product.They are all parasites who are not just a drag on the economy but parasitise it.And not cleaning them up leaves them free to lie and threaten and defraud on the internet as a lifestyle.

Sincerely
Tony Ryals

Senator Bennett :Is Patrick Byrne's NCANS a Fraud ?

http://utah.indymedia.org/news/2005/10/11883.php

Did Judge Ken Reilly and Houston attorney John O'Quinn aid terrorists ?

http://www.ntimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=3160

Has Patrick Byrne's attorney covered up stock fraud and money laundering ?

http://utah.indymedia.org/news/2005/09/11613_comment.php

Senator Bennett:Is Patrick Byrne's NCANS A Fraud ?

http://utah.indymedia.org/news/2005/10/11883.php

Open letter to SEC and John Reed Stark on penny stock fraud

http://news.com.com/5208-7350-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=8925&messageID=63848&start=-1

To SEC:James Angel Georgetown University aids penny stock fraud

http://cvilleindymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=1800

Charles Schwab and Share-Money Laundering

http://sfbay.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/1747107.php

The man who conned Senator Bennett:

http://www.utah.indymedia.org/news/2005/07/11216.php

http://www.offshorebusiness.com/message_board_detail.asp?id=16349&page=1

Securities Exchange Commission
Office of Internet Enforcement

Dear John Reed Stark,

I was hoping to reach you as you are the head of the SEC Internet Division,and a Georgetown professor, and ask you,human to human as a defrauded investor in an illegal pump from a Charles Schwab and possibly a vFinance account , what is going on in the penny stock securities fraud and internet securities fraud business ? Just how big of a business is it and who does it really benefit ?

A David Marchant ,'KYC' ,'Know Your Client', or http://www.offshorebusiness.com inspired article in 'The Royal Gazette' last year,quoting one SEC lawyer and a broker at VFinance said this.:

'"The volume of LOM's US trading, whether on behalf of its customers or its own accounts, is staggering," stated Mr. Ungar. "For example, in LOM's account at Schwab, during a two-week period in 2003 – the same year in which the SHEP and Sedona transactions in question occurred – LOM bought or sold, on over 4,000 different occasions, a total of 151 million shares of US securities traded over various US securities markets."

The trader at Florida-based vFinance who was in charge of LOM's account testified that "LOM's trading over the US markets was more than the trading of most US regional banks" and that he "either accumulated or liquidated millions of shares a day for them", stated Mr. Ungar.'

http://www.theroyalgazette.com

Just how much money does that represent and will the SEC do anything to recover my and many others losses? Why do you let a virtual penny stock mafia operate over the internet,particularly ragingbull and Yahoo in the first place ? They at laugh at your lax and non-existent enforcement everyday.That's just a fact.

Why do you think penny stock securities frauds like
David Patch create http://www.investigatethesec.com to promote a fraud of illegal pump and ops James Dale Davidson of the National Taxpayers Union and other
penny stock criminals then blame on 'naked shorting' ? Why do you think people like James Dale Davidson who blatently run one penny stock pump and dump after the other then turn around and say the
'SEC lies' ?

David Patch besides touting the Davidson
Genemax scam directly on http://www.ragingbull.com himself under various aliases and 'investigatethesec'
website is connected in some way to Jag Media Holdings.The SEC has finally put the lie to jagh's fraudulent claim of being 'naked shorted' yet David Patch and his touting http://www.investigatethesec.com
and ncans.net a carbon copy on their 'NAANSS' continues the fraud of 'you're being naked shorted,
buy a cert'. Why ?

James Dale Davidson and the Lord Rees-Mogg were both shareholders when they recommended LOM in their book,'The Sovereign Individual',(again information gleaned from David Marchant's,KYC,or offshorebusiness.com),without disclosing that fact,of course.I am almost sure Endovasc and Davidson dumped from the Schwab LOM account but Schwab will not disclose to me even though it appears obvious it was an illegal pump and dump account and their Beltway located 'anti-money laundering,anti-pump and dump 'expert,Mantas Inc.,with all its software,didn't catch it. Why ?

In fact James Dale Davidson has Beltway connections coincidentally.It's not just 'the mob on Wall Street 'so much as 'a mob in the Beltway' who may be using penny stocks not only to defraud their fellow Americans but to launder money.Do you believe that supposition too wild ?

James Dale Davidson definitely touted or fraudulently promoted Endovasc through Agora's 'Vantage Point' in late 2002.He did not simply send out mailings to private clients as the SEC claimed,he was involved in and benefitted from illegal pumps and dumps of Endovasc and Genemax,among many many others over the years, then fraudulently claimed they were 'naked shorted' knowing full well,as an insider to the illegal pump and dump from a Charles Schwab account,that this was a lie.

Now he,or a 'Bob O'Brien' who will not identiy himself and pays for ~100,000+ ads-letters to W Bush in the Washington Post with Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com, is using the same 'naked short' scam that I consider to be of Beltway origen to rob naive Americans and perhaps launder money,just as the Nigerian letter scam has Nigerian origens,to tout Patrick Byrne's OSTK and NFI. James Dale Davidson,I mean 'Bob O'Brien,is claiming in both cases they are victims of 'naked shorting' and that investors in either should buy 'certs' to protect themselves .This is the exact scam Davidson ran with his 'NAANSS' SCAM AND YOU KNOW IT.

I believe because NFI is more a ponzi scheme where dividends are paid to recruit more suckers and more shares are sold to pay the dividends,amgong other
things,this puts the lie to the 'naked short' claim because no one, to my knowledge, has claimed having shares that are not receiving their dividends.

I don't know why James Dale Davidson,excuse me,I mean 'Bob O'Brien' didn't figure that flaw in his fraudulent 'NFI is being naked shorted' scam.As for OSTK,'ncansd3' or 'Bob O'Brien has been touting it furiously since the recent SEC filing,and claiming the 'float' is only 100,000 shares!!! And to buy 'certs' to protect yourself from 'naked shorters' of course.

Also can you or anyone provide an explanation of this 'shareholders agreement' below on pdf file ? Is this any proof of an illegal pump and dump from a Schwab account ? Does pump and dump always include money laundering as a corresponding crime ? What other purpose would such an account filled with millions of EVSC shares for 'select clients' be for ?

I was able to get this letter and 'shareholders agreement' from Schwab in 2003 but never able to get any documentation of 'trading activities' for that account for late 2002 when James Dale Davidson promoted or touted through Agora and trading volume hit the ceiling for a couple of weeks.Then the company and attorney O'Quinn claimed I was being 'naked shorted'!

This I am now sure was a fraud to conceal a pump and dump but Schwab remained silent. So I bought a 'cert' from former SEC employee Alexander Walker and his 'NATCO' tranfer agency in Nevada,not knowing he was also an insider to the fraud and would receive $200,000 in freely dumpable shares as an 'insider' a year later and no telling what under the table.

I've wanted to put this letter from Charles Schwab and the Endovasc shareholders agreement online for a couple of years but couldn't do the simplest of pdf posting skills.The indybay.org format or whatever made it fairly straight forward so here it is. And is the fact of no money changing hands being mentioned in the 'agreement' to deposit up to 30 million shares - two months in fact before a 'reverse split' would supposedly reduce all shares to less than three million - unusual !?

I don't understand.It would appear Schwab Capital and other market makers would not allow the reverse split in June if already that many shares would be deposited in a Schwab account,thus making the 'reverse split' null and void ? Yet they did. Can anyone explain ? I'm as confused as I was defrauded. I feel Charles Schwab and Endovasc and their 'select clients' all worked togather to deceive and deraud me and among other things,Schwab working as both broker and market maker and accounts holder benefitted from illegal insider information in being able to know the trading or dumping patterns from the very stocks the were market making with.

And I do feel the failed their fiduciary duty to me by not providing a heads up as to what was going on,much less in hosting a pump and dump account that would destroy my investment,however naive that investment might have been in retrospect.

Also around November 2002 James Dale Davidson began his touting in Agora-Vantage Point and that is when the volume exceeded a million shares per day.I couldn't believe it for a couple of weeks,thinking nearly half existing shares were being bought and sold every day,then it all ended as fast and Endovasc and attorney John O'Quinn put out a businesswire pr claiming I was 'naked shorted' by Schwab,Ameritrade and Refco !I learned next year of course they had dumped perhaps 10's of millions of shares, so it was no 'naked short'.

Schwab remained quiet and I only got this 'shareholder agreement' a year later after complaining to the SEC.Schwab will still not say if it was LOM or Davidson or who.Is there any way I can find out ? Did SCHWAB knowingly host an illegal pump and dump account ? Who are they protecting ? LOM of Bermuda as you may know has come under some investigation from SEC for unusual volume manipulation and dumping of penny stocks from their Schwab account.Davidson and or Agora Publications was accused of touting Endovasc, Genemax,and
USU but they may have gotten off,I'm not sure.

Do I have any right to know as an investor in Endovasc and client of Schwab and or any legal recourse ? Or will the SEC stop coddling the criminals,whether they are of Beltway origen or foreign citizens ?

http://www.indybay.org/uploads/copia_de_schwab_letter_to_car_14_march_2003_with

Would this account not go a long way in explaining what many,including your colleague James Angel of Georgetown,James Dale Davidson of the National Tapayers Union and 'NAANSS' and 'NCANS', and Texas' 'famed trial attorney John O'Quiin ' et.al. claim to be 'naked shorting' ? Why not provide them an explanation? They appear even more confused than I am.But I admit they all had me confused enough to defraud me or let me be defrauded with their mis-information, and Charles Schwab was not 'naked shorting' but providing illegal pump and dump accounts !!! Is that not what really happened ?

Does Jonathan Katz know that he was being misled,to say the least,by both Endovasc attorney John O'Quinn and Georgetown professor James Angel about 'naked shorting' when they both wrote letters to him decrying it? Does Georgetown realise their reputation is being used to support a securities fraud ?

Dr.Angel can provide no proof whatsoever for his erroneous claims to either the SEC or to the public through his ncans video.This appears to me a great mistake or a form of academic fraud.While economics may not be an exact science there comes a point when some statements can and must be backed by figures and examples or one should, and Dr.Angel is an example,simply remain silent,if he does or did not know,what he is talking about.

Instead he makes video infomercials for a scam 'naked short' promoting website,that has no address other than a striptease joint in Las Vegas,funded by James Dale Davidson and Patrick Byrne,who pretend it's 'moms and pops' backing it and that they,(Davidson and Byrne),don't really know each other !!

In sum,as I'm sure you know,in penny stocks which Dr.James Angel places himself in the position of an authority,the naked short claim' has been erroneously used for fraud on a massive scale. Why ? Because for some reason the SEC is unable,or unwilling in my opinion,to audit penny stock shares.One cannot audit money flow if one cannot monitor share flow.

You see,the joke with Dr.Angel's statements is the same delimma I faced when 'famed trial attorney O'Quinn and Endovasc's phoney Dr.David P. Summers put out a Businesswire pr in late 2002, just after Davidson's touting with his Agora Publications and the dump that followed.(I,of course,knew nothing about the pump and dump or even that Davidson was touting at the time because I was not an insider.)

Angel has no data to prove his case of 'naked shorting' or lack thereof in penny stocks because the SEC provides none and allows fraud companies like EVSC,GMXX,CMXX,USXP,JAGH,and on and on, not to provide any !!! Georgetown's James Angel made an eroneous claim that,only coincidentally,aided and abetted Senator Bennett's false claim re Global Links,etc.,based upon no empirical data for the very reason the SEC does not monitor penny stock floats.

Why doesn't Dr.Angel mention that fact and not make erroneous claims that aid and abet the penny stock fraud market based upon no data ? In many areas of academics and perhaps even in his own field in a rigorous academic environment he would be thouroughly discredited for his false claims based upon 0 data.

While even the Belladorgroup,of Kuala Lumpur and terrorist suspect money laundering haven Dubai,has acknowledged a business relation to Endovasc both in an 'Endovasc scam warning' on their own website and on posts on the offshorebusiness.com message board,there is nothing of this in SEC filings.So how could a novice investor such as myself who has trouble still with SEC filings have known Endovasc's Dwight Cantrell and Robert Johnson had made a deal with them and more shares were going to be dumped in to the float even as they continued to cry 'naked shorting' ?

And although David P. Summers and Attorney John O'Quinn released businesswire prs in late 2002 claiming my own broker, Charles Schwab,had an 'oversold position' after the 40 for 1 'reverse split' and pump and dump,there were no records of massive shares released for dumping until an SEC filing the next year !! And even that concealed the parties involved who I believe mainly dumped from the Schwab account.

Below is material I have already begun to put on internet although I plan to try and edit and do a better job of explaining the fraud and the use of Georgetown University to promote it.Also one final,although to me,certainly no less significant point.Why has the SEC and you as the head of their internet division done nothing to clean up http://www.ragingbull.com that any fool knows is the center for organised penny stock cyberfraud in the U.S. ?

It was even the source of the first insider chatter about a letter being published in the Washington Post to W. Bush() et.al.,on February 8 by Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com and'Bob O'Brien',or James Dale Davidson as I prefer to call him,claiming fraudulently, that 'naked shorting' was the biggest danger to SS investing in the stock markets,aside from http://www.nfi-info.net that was organizing it, which I didn't know at the time !!!

This site has been used by so many penny stock criminals it isn't funny and if you fight back as I did,(using the alias wolfblitzzer0),you are as likely to be accused of being a criminal yourself,even though you are really only trying to prevent fellow Anmericans from being riped off by international criminals touting and dumping unaudited U.S. penny stocks with fraudulent lies!!

Susan Blumenthal who did run the athena-sword website warning others about ADOT and the potential losses an investor who is not an insider might suffer, is a good example as well of harrassment by what I see as the internet mafia that dominates http://www.ragingbull.com that you do nothing about.Why ?

Since the time I faced the fact by early 2003 that I was defrauded in an illegal pump and dump of every penny I had from an inheritence,(only trying to support a Stanford patent I believed in at the time of Dr.Heeschen and Cooke of that university),I have been on http://www.ragingbull.com everyday trying to warn others away and watching touter aliases I know to be part of the fraud always there day after day touting Endovasc shares and that the company was a victim of 'naked shorting'.

And yet the SEC does nothing.Why ? Why even have an internet fraud group when you do nothing ? Ignoring the fraud and organised internet crime and touting on rb makes a joke of the SEC internet and cyberfraud efforts.Even the touters knowingly laugh at the SEC internet division and laughingly provide the SEC complaint email link and dare you to waste your time with and email complaint.

Just as another fraudulent James Dale Davidson connected,(by way of David Patch who used to tout Genemax),website called http://www.investigatethesec.com, promotes fraudulent companies who all claim to be victims of 'naked short selling',as well.Why ? The most disheartening aspect of their dare or tease is knowing they are correct,the SEC does nothing. Do you all like it that way ?

So ragingbull.com remains the central organizing point of penny stock touting and organized penny stock crime.Besides the occasional,or obsessive and fraudulent Businesswire prs,the main source of spreading fraudulent lies,or directing victims to specialized mind control penny stock websites such as the many CMKX sites as an example,or the old 'naanss' website,or faulkingtruth.com or investigatethesec.com,and on and on is ragingbull.com.

Many probably became acquainted with the scammy FinancialWire scam 'publication' Senator Bennett used as his proof that Global Links was being 'naked shorted' was by way of the ragingbull.com. website. You could have raided that site years ago but have never touched it.Why ?

In fact I have noticed over the years and particularly when my ' wolblitzzer0' alias made it to google search by way of ending up on various law and internet speech and law blogs,that the ragingbull.com is NEVER search engined by Google or any other search engine for that matter.Is this on purpose ? Are someones blocking Google etc. searches there ? Are those running ragingbull.com afraid or ashamed to put what goes on there into the public view through search engines ? Don't you think something strange and corrupt is going on ? I do.

Ragingbull is a site for fraud and fraud prefers a dark alley of the internet if possible to do its thing.

Sincerely

Tony Ryals

Did Utah SEC's Brent Baker cover up for National Taxpayers Union Founder ?

http://www.utah.indymedia.org/news/2005/10/11937.php

Judge Ken Reilly,Endovasc and money laundering in Montgomery,Texas

http://www.ntimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=2828

Senator Bennett duped in penny stock scam

utah.indymedia.org/news/2005/07/11165.php

Charles Schwab and share-money laundering

sfbay.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/1747107.php

James Angel:Does Haas School of Business Teach Ethics or Fail Securities ?

http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/08/1758355.php

The Man Who Conned Senator Bennett

utah.indymedia.org/news/2005/07/11216_comment.php

This from ncans.net or bobosrevenge blog by 'Bob O'Brien' Overstock..com's and PATRICK BYRNE'S PAID TOUT. All the diologue however is that of Patrick
Byrne.:

Dr. Patrick Byrne's Message to the Motley Fool Board
Usually Sanity Check is my bully pulpit, from which I pontificate, complain, berate, and mock.

Especially mock. Nothing drives powerful forces up to no good crazier than being mocked. It is almost as though once you have the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, the next must have is the awe and respect of a breathless public. And when a fun-filled rodent mocks you, or shines a light on your ugly hypocrisy, that apparently doesn't go over very well.

Which is part of the joy in doing it.

This segment of our regular broadcast will be devoted to the enormously erudite and insightful words of a man I have grown to respect, both intellectually, as well as for intestinal fortitude and true moral integrity. As one goes down the road of life it is all to often that our actions seem small and pointless, and our will to excel or attempt the daunting diminishes over time. Dr. Byrne has a way of demanding more out of himself, as well as those fortunate enough to share his company, and by doing so, leads by example. That is rare. Rarer still is a guy who does the right thing, even when he knows doing so will be invite character assassination, will subject him to enormous hardship, and will gain him little or nothing personally from doing it. Dr. Byrne is without question one of the rare ones.

This was posted by Dr. Byrne on the Motley Fool message board today, and represents his capsule summary of the latest rounds of slanderous charges against him, as well as his responses. It should be required reading for anyone that questions his character, his abilities, his commitment, or his honesty.

Without further ado, here is the content of that post:

" Dear Fools (Motley and Otherwise),

Bill has written an excellent piece on the battle we are waging. In that article he quite fairly suggests that something about the news coverage so far seems strangely misguided, but that also, my own over-the-top behavior my be hurting my cause. Again, it is fair to say that, but I would politely respond that my behavior is not so over-the-top is many would pretend, as should be clear when all the truths are known. However, Mr. Mann has given me an idea: I am going to answer some of the flak that gets shot at me by various parties, and then ignore it in the future. I do this both to give the general reader a more detailed look at my arguably over-the-top behavior, and also so that, when folks come back and post and repost the criticisms, perhaps some friendlies can answer for me by copying and pasting from what appears below.

Why do I do this? Because I feel that this is how conversations with SOME (unnamed people) go:

Me: I went out last night to see a movie.

Hostiles: But you were seen at midnight in Howard Johnson's having an ice cream!

Me: That's right, on the way home I stopped at Howard Johnson's to have an ice cream.

Hostiles: But why'd you say you went out to see a movie when you had an ice cream?!? Why didn't you say you had ice cream the first time? And besides, how could you have had an ice cream at the movies? I've been going to movies for 25 years and they don't serve ice cream there. Well, they do in some, but which movie theater were you in having ice cream anyway? I bet it does not serve ice cream and besides, you were wearing a blue shirt, but three years on a conference call you said you prefer red to blue, so were you lying then or now? And what about the ice cream?

In other words, sometimes sincere, sometimes trivial, sometimes self-contradictory stuff which I generally ignore for three reasons:

1) I suspect it is transparent to most adults, and so they don't need me to answer it anyway;

2) When I assume the best and answer it anyway, the person just goes on and on anyway as though I have not answered to drown out my response, or finds something else in my answer to jump on, which leads me to...;

3) I suspect at times that the writer is just trying to waste my time and obfuscate any informative discussion. Thus he does not really believe what he writes anyway, and thus I should not waste time answering points that are not sincerely being asserted. That said, I will, for the record answer all the things that have been bandied about that I can remember at the moment. I will do so clearly, and then I will ignore further discussion on them: again, I ask of readers who follow these matters, when they see the kind of behavior described above, just cut and paste from below and answer for me, to save me answering the same (often trivial or harassing) questions over and over:

A) The SPE for the diamond: we have a great relationship with some folks in the diamond industry who wish to remain in the background. We need their expertise, they need our channel. The SPE gave us a way to compartmentalize our work together and get the economics extremely clean and auditable.

B) Press release: We release news when we have it. We had a 5 week hiatus in uploading products, but as we got that part of the system nearly working it occurred to us to do a marketing blitz about it. We send emails Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and so decided to devote one of them to pound a "largest inventory upload in our history!" theme, along with a bunch of messaging on our home page, along with some messages to our affiliate marketing partners (who focus a lot on new inventory), along with a press release that we hoped would get picked up in a few newspapers and drive some consumers to the site.

I reviewed the marketing email theme and the home page messaging, and wrote the bones of a press release over the weekend. But the inventory upload was not working by Sunday (though we hoped it might be), so scratched it for the Monday email. IT kept working away on the program and we hoped we could upload Tuesday, but the program kept clogging, so we scratched Wednesday. Thursday it began working in fits and starts, but did not get out of test mode until around 11 PM Thursday night. They began uploading products through the night, saying it would take until sometime Friday for all to be complete (I believe there were tens of thousands of products). Someone in marketing made the (correct) decision to release the Friday marketing email to about 6 million people, but set it to go later in the morning than our normal email, I believe, to give time for more products to be populating the site. The product loader continued running at full blast until noon on Friday. We knew we had uploaded somewhere between $16 million and $40 million of inventory, depending on what one counted and how one counted it, and asked for IT to run a query to get an answer. They came back at 1:40 PM with the number (I think it was $30 million). We are in Utah: 1:40 PM is 3:40 PM in New York. Our guys put out a press release twenty minutes later.

Somewhere late in that process it occurred to us to add to the end of the press release a section for the benefit of shareholders, filling them in on internal events, as is my habit with quarterly earnings letters. Also, somewhere late in that process when it became clear when we would be hitting the "Go" button it occurred to some among us: "Wait! If you release news on a Friday afternoon people say you are trying to bury it." I gave that objection somewhere less than 10 seconds of consideration before deciding to ignore it for the following reasons:

i) It is a dumb convention:_____a) It dates from the days of print journalism;_____b) The rest of the world works on Friday afternoon until 5: so can Wall Street.

i) I don't care about Wall Street conventions anyway (anyone notice how we went public, or our earnings letters, or our earnings calls, etc.?)

iii) It seems right to release news when we have it, and to ignore all such considerations anyway (with the exception of not releasing news on weekends, and the possible exception of placing important news at the beginning or end of a trading day);

iv) If we did not release it Friday we had to wait until Monday, but the whole point was to get it to coincide as closely as possible with the 6 million recipient marketing blast and the home page announcement.Now among my colleagues there may have been some whose reaction was, "Perception is reality." The mere fact that some will perceive it as objectionable means that it IS objectionable!” To which my internal response was, “Above nearly any expression I can think of, I detest 'Perception is reality' above all. Reality is reality, perception is perception: get that neo-Kantian drivel out of here (Immanuel Kant is the enemy of the human race, but that is for another day). I deal in reality, not perception. Etc.” Well, my response was not so philosophical, but that is about what I was thinking. (If you had a choice between doing A and B, and you knew A was the right thing to do and B the wrong, but you knew that the arrangement of facts was such that the world was going to see A as being wrong and B right, which would you do? You do the right thing and take your lumps.)

Of course, the usual suspects showed up on blogs and message boards within a few days: "Can you believe that they ignored a convention of Wall Street and put out news on a Friday afternoon?!?!?!? Oh my God!!!!!!!!!! Don't they know that there is a convention of Wall Street that says you don't do that?!?!?! And they ignored it?!?!?! Oh my God!!!!!!!!!! How could anyone ignore a convention of Wall Street?!?!?!”

C) Moles and disinformation: this is one of those things that I explained on the Miscreants' Ball conference call, knowing full well that the bad guys would twist it all around and make hoo-hah about it. But consider: in Bill Mann's excellent piece on our three affidavits one of his most telling points is something he puts quite subtly. "Unlike a lot of the silliness in the media relating to Overstock, this complaint is not frivolous on its face, and although Overstock will need to prove its allegations, the case must be taken seriously. The question to us is why the atmosphere around this lawsuit has, from the beginning, been comical."

I told this story with care on my Miscreants' Ball call, and will tell it again with greater care here. I ask the reader to consider it against how it was treated by a few members of the "press". Compare this story to what they wrote, for it perhaps gives a road map to who the bent journalists are.

Sometime last autumn I came to suspect I was being bugged because in a phone call to my girlfriend (Gina, the woman in New York who runs a restaurant whom I have mentioned in a conference call or two) a figure of speech I used showed up on the message boards in a posting from a basher. I do not remember the expression, but I recall it was neither a common one nor a really arcane one. I think it was something along the lines of, "Such-and-such an idea of mine really sh-t the bed." A few days later, an attacker on Yahoo (the message board was not so clogged then that I could spend 20 minutes once or twice a week and catch up on it) then wrote something like, "Byrne's idea on such-and-such really sh-ts the bed." I don't recall the idea or if this was the precise expression, so I am just trying to give a feel for it: the expression was just odd enough and the Yahoo post just dead on enough that it piqued my suspicion.

About this same time, as you will understand when the whole story gets told someday (I hope Brad Pitt plays me in the movie!), I began to get a lot clearer picture of the players involved in the Miscreant's Ball, including certain professionals who have a reputation for being as crooked as the day is long and who are quite capable of bugging phones and apartments (and whose modus operandi includes placing moles).

In any case, when next I saw Gina, we agreed that we would test this occasionally and try to confirm or falsify it. I considered using financial information, but decided against it for two reasons. First, it gets stale within months, and if I lied one time ("Gina, we are having a terrible Christmas!") and then later came out with a good one, the miscreants would know I was on to them. Secondly, if I did it and people (even miscreants and blackguards) started trading on it in the marketplace, then it would be like poisoning a town well supply to get at a few hooligans. So if I could not use financial information, I had to use personal information: thus, we agreed on "cocaine" for the cell phone and "gay" for the landline, that periodically we would put that information down those channels and see if it bubbled up anywhere. Again I apologize to anyone offended by appearing to equate the two: I just needed two things that, if they appeared, I would have no question about where they came from nor would I care if they appeared. (Incidentally, it was in that context that I mentioned on the Miscreants Ball conference call that with the exception of one evening I have never even seen coke in my life, so if the rumor appeared I would have no doubt where it came from: in the hands of the miscreants that turns into "Why is Byrne denying he is a cokehead? He must be a cokehead!").

Within a few weeks I did start noticing occasional message board posts along the lines of, "Byrne is such a f-g." But nothing decisive, and for all I know it was some 15 year old. Then I got a call from my old dissertation advisor from Stanford, who now lives in England. He told me that a woman had called him claiming to be an investor doing due diligence, and wanted to ask about me. She had asked him a lot of personal questions about me, including was I into drugs, especially cocaine. Again, nothing conclusive (although such due diligence is common with privately held companies, and not the kind of thing that mutual funds or legitimate investors do when considering buying stock in a public company, in my experience).

Then in this July's conference call I described how tightly held OSTK is by myself and my parents, my brothers and cousins ("folks I had taken a bath with" when I was a toddler), a few friends, and 10 institutions. Almost immediately a reporter named Carol Remond, whom is widely thought to be in league with the same hedge funds I am battling (look for companies that David Rocker is short that Carol has written stories on), starting calling people to tell them that the phrase "folks I had taken a bath with" was a reference to (I kid thee not) a gay bathhouse cabal which I run. Again, I kid thee not.

Now is any of that decisive? No. As I say in my conference calls, "You now know everything I do." Well, not actually, but you know a lot.

I also began hunting for a mole within the company. There are various ways to do this that I cannot go into (except to say that we considered using financial misinformation within the company and then tracking where it leaked, but discarded it for the same reason mentioned above). Also, I do not want to identify the individuals at this time so I must be circumspect in how I tell this story. In any case, the hunt was on and went nowhere for some time. Then a funny thing happened: after a lot of negatives, suddenly one indicator went strongly, strongly positive for a couple people. These alarms concerned apparent regular contact with certain elements in New York, along with unusual and ultimately inexplicable financial matters. Fill in the blanks yourself (but please know that "elements in New York" refers to people other than David Rocker).

At roughly the same time, one of those people requested a very odd transfer within the company. I do not want to identify this person, so all I will say is that the request was as strange as if someone working in the inbound trucking department suddenly wanted to work in the department that creates art for the home page. Except that the arena this person wanted to work in was one that would provide detailed information on all the workings in the company. Behind the scenes I made arrangements for the request to be approved. The person assumed the new position and began acting in ways that mystified and alarmed colleagues. Within Overstock, only two people besides myself knew of my suspicions, yet the four people close to this person began sounding the alarm that some extremely odd behavior was occurring.

I repeat, this is a person who had access to our daily financial information, as well as a weekly packet that covers everything going on within the company. Who was having, I believe, regular contact with a certain hedge fund and related party in New York, through a channel they had disguised only with some effort. And who had some quite strange personal financial dealings. In a perfect world or in different settings we could have played various games for a long time to sting the miscreants. However, I could not use financial information (for the reasons given above), and was cognizant of the responsibility to put an end to a leak that I believe probably existed since January (that is, I suspect a hedge fund has been receiving all our financial and operational details since January, on a weekly basis). Also, I was tired of dancing with these folks. So I confronted the person. Again, I do not wish to disclose identifying details, so I will recount the conversation in the framework of Charlie Brown.

"Charlie, do you know Linus, Snoopy, or Lucy?"
"No, I never met Linus, Snoopy, or Lucy."
"OK, here is a photo of you with Linus."
"Oh that's right, I do know Linus, but I don't know Snoopy or Lucy."
"OK, here is information that you and Snoopy own this bank account together."
"Oh that's right, I do have a bank account with Snoopy. But I don't know Lucy."
"OK, here is where you and Lucy have a dummy corporation together."
"Ah, yes we do. I forgot."
"OK, what does the company do?"
"I don't really know."

Seriously, it was that bizarre a conversation. With three witnesses. Obviously, the person is no longer employed here.

Incidentally, we alerted authorities, who have tried to question this person: the person has refused to be questioned and instructed the authorities to contact a certain lawyer (the call from the law seems to have been expected). Even that is relatively strange and sophisticated behavior in such circumstances for a person who had been working in the job equivalent of inbound trucking.

D) IT? Stuff happens. Shawn is awesome, and got us through a massive re-architecture over the last two years. First, he got us through a period when our then current systems were redlining so badly we were in danger of imploding. Second, he got us onto a set of systems that scale horizontally and vertically for the foreseeable future (see my Q2 conference call for greater detail). Third, we had reached the point where our code writing was log-jammed: it was taking longer and longer to add new features besides so much of the code was just hard-wired patches. This is not completely fixed yet, incidentally: still, large elements of our code base have gotten transformed, made modular, upgraded, or been replaced by professional third party packages. Not bad for two years' work. And not bad for a tiny fraction of the cost of our competitors.

That said, Shawn has been begging to step down for a year, either to go back into business development or take a leave of absence. I described in my Q2 call that there was one more large package to be delivered, probably in August: he delivered it and left for a vacation that might have stretched out to a couple of months. At that time I appointed Sam Peterson Acting CIO, thinking we would sort it all out when Shawn returned. In fact, however, the last package did not really spin up as well as we had hoped, and after a few weeks Shawn canceled his leave to come back and help. He has been here a few weeks, things are much better (albeit not completely resolved), and so he has taken a leave of absence. Sam is CIO (although, since we eschew "C" titles here, officially it is "SVP Technology").

I do have a non-IT mission for Shawn that will keep until he returns, if he decides to return: he has put in 5 hard years working for Overstock and is due a rest. Since our executives rarely if ever sell stock, and since I keep buying it, the miscreants claim that there is some kind of "blood oath" among us not to sell stock. Shawn in fact has only bought stock, except for the time he exercises options to buy a car, and the time he exercised some to get $50k to fund a small restaurant in his hometown.

Yet Shawn met a girl in Europe and wanted her to come back with him to the USA when he was done his vacation. He needed money to move out of the Marriott Residence Inn (where has lived for 5 years) to buy a home and her a car. So he sold 2,700 shares, some or all of which were shares that he had personally bought in the open market at $11 a couple years ago. This leaves him with about 60,000 options (if memory serves), at least half of which have vested and which he could have cashed in for half a million to a million, but which he choose not to do. He got off the plane and placed an order to sell some shares because our blackout period was about to go into effect (September 15), so he could have the funds to move out of the Marriott and find a home when his gal showed up. He placed the order before even being back in the office, and before he was aware of any inventory uploads or marketing blitz the following Friday.

The reason Shawn sold when he did, then, was that we have about the most restrictive blackout period in corporate America, and if he did not do it then he would not have been able to sell a share until late October or early November; he had a gal moving over from England, and did not want to start off with her in the same Marriott room he has been living for five years; and he was not aware of quite what was going on in the office.

That said, Shawn has now split again, and does not expect to come back. When Shawn left he reminded me of what Jason said when he left. Jason Lindsey, you may remember, was my partner in getting Overstock off the ground: he started as CFO but became President to my CEO, but resigned almost immediately, giving the miscreants opportunity to rail about that, of course. What actually happened was that (as Jason has given me permission to disclose) his wife turned out to have a hole in her heart and he needed to take care of her and his family, and when he came and asked for a few weeks off I suggested he feel free to leave and attend to her full-time. Before he left he said, "Dude, I feel like there is some wild bull that no one else has ever ridden. All these fancy cowboys show up with million-dollar diamond studded saddles and get thrown in seconds. There is some fat slob in the corner who has wasted billions and the crowd fawns over him saying, 'Look at gracefully he sailed into the pile of manure! Look at how quickly he good he looks as the clowns carry him out of the arena.' But here we are, we show up like Mike Tyson wearing a pair of black shorts and some sneakers, and we ride this bull like no one ever rode it. We go like a few years ago no one thought it could be ridden. But all the knuckleheads in the stands say, 'Oh but you said you were going to smile over your right shoulder when you rounded and you smiled over your left, you were supposed to hold that wave a little longer than you did.' Why do you want to work for these jerks another day?" That pretty much sums up Shawn's attitude as well.

The quarter we are in (q4 2005), I expect to reach an interesting mark: we should be somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 the size of Amazon in North America (in about half their lifespan). We have been growing since we went public at a rate of near 100%: hypothetically, if we continue at 75% we catch Amazon North America in size in about two more years (q4 2007). Our gross margin is quite close to theirs, and has even passed it in at least one recent quarter (put their fulfillment back into COGS to get an apples-to-apples comparison with ours). We have done this on about 1/15th of their corporate G&A, 1/25th of their technology spending, and 1/30th their losses. And we have done it while being true the whole way to the principles of fairness to the common investor: from the way we went public through a Hambrecht Dutch auction (though we were warned that we would be a Wall Street pariah for doing so), to the degree with which we treat shareholders like true owners (though every securities lawyer we knew warned of the high exposure in doing so), to my decision to risk fortune and reputation to start a barroom brawl against a group of folks who for years have used Wall Street machinations to suck the blood of small companies, though most think suicidal of me to do so (wait until you read the affidavits before you make up your mind on that one).

So a bunch of quisling bloggers, lapdog journalists, and hedge fund shills vilify me, lie about what I say, smear my colleagues as strippers and what-not, and try to spew as much mirth, mockery, venom and distortion as they can to prevent any discussion of the claims, which as Bill Mann says, are really quite straightforward. Well, boo-freaking-hoo. Go figure. Never saw that one coming.

Anyway, I hope that this gives folks who want to understand what is going here the psychic inoculation they will need for what the future holds. And I am not saying that everyone who criticizes me on these boards is a shill, but the way: some may be quite sincere. It is hard for me to tell at this point. But if anyone wants to use any of this material to answer either the the Yahoo jackanapes on my behalf, or the putatively sincere ones, I'd be much obliged.

Respectfully,

Patrick

# posted by bob obrien @ 8:23 PM 0 comments