From: Christopher Faille [mailto:XXX@hedgeworld.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2008 3:06 PM
To: XXX
Subject: an e-mail from Byrne to Herb Greenberg last week?

XXX

Thank you for the kind words.

There is something you might be able to help me with. Something on Herb Greenberg’s blog on MarketWatch has me shaking my head.

As you presumably know, Mr. Greenberg is himself one of the centers of controversy about so-called short-and-distort stock price manipulation. He received a subpoena from the SEC in 2006.

Anyway, back in 2008: on April 15, Greenberg announced that he’ll soon be leaving MarketWatch to start an independent research firm.

The following day, he said that he had received an e-mail from Patrick Byrne, which he posted. I’ll paste it below, in italics.

It raises obvious questions. One might of course suspect a prank — some third party could have sent it pretending to be Byrne for whatever reason. So the first question is: does Byrne acknowledge authorship of the e-mail below?

Second: the wording seems odd. As Byrne knows, it is customary when a reporter is asking a source to comment on allegations to be quite concrete about what allegations, from whom, in what context. For example, I recently asked Byrne to comment on a specific cross-complaint filed in a specific court by a specific defendant in an ongoing lawsuit. That is very different from the vagueness of “There are allegations that…”!

Allegations never just “are”! Somebody alleges something. So: is Byrne himself using this wording to make the allegation himself (in essence, that Greenberg isn’t leaving voluntarily)? or is he saying that he has heard such things? in some context or other? are the allegations in any publication or website or whatever, and were they there prior to the moment when Greenberg quoted Byrne’s e-mail?

I look forward to any light you can shed on all this.

Dear Herb,
There are allegations that you were terminated upon CBSMarketWatch’s observation that positions in your columns overlap with the trading positions of certain hedge funds. What is your comment on these allegations?
Respectfully,
Patrick M. Byrne, Journalist

Christopher Faille
Senior Financial Correspondent
Lipper HedgeWorld
XXXX
Enfield, CT 06082
TEL XXXX
XXXX

==========================================================================================================

Dear Mr. Faille,

I will address your questions in the order you raise them.

1) “Does Byrne acknowledge authorship of the e-mail below?”

Yes, proudly.

2) “Second: the wording seems odd. As Byrne knows, it is customary when a reporter is asking a source to comment on allegations to be quite concrete about what allegations, from whom, in what context. For example, I recently asked Byrne to comment on a specific cross-complaint filed in a specific court by a specific defendant in an ongoing lawsuit. That is very different from the vagueness of ‘There are allegations that…’!”

This is quite definitely false. Financial reporters have often called me asking me to respond to rumors with no source the reporter was willing to identify. For example, in June 2006 Herb called me to ask about a rumor then being circulated. When I told him I would respond when he identified his source, his answer was, “You can answer my question, or not answer my question.” Second and third examples came last Q2, from Roddy Boyd and another reporter I will not identify (because he is a good guy), both of whom called me over an identical (largely false) leak they had been fed. So I think that your theory regarding the SOP for financial reporters is false.

3) “So: is Byrne himself using this wording to make the allegation himself (in essence, that Greenberg isn’t leaving voluntarily)? or is he saying that he has heard such things? in some context or other? are the allegations in any publication or website or whatever, and were they there prior to the moment when Greenberg quoted Byrne’s e-mail?”

Yes, I definitely did hear this rumor prior to writing Herb: I’m sorry, as a journalist I cannot reveal my source.

Best always,
Patrick

Over the past month, dozens of volunteers have joined together to assemble a staggering amount of evidence backing up one of the central claims of deepcapture.com: that former financial journalist Gary Weiss is possibly the most profoundly conflicted Wikipedia editor in the history of that website.

By all accounts, the resulting mass of evidence vastly exceeded any previous effort and produced a “case” supporting the claim that Gary Weiss has, in extreme violation of Wikipedia policy, deceitfully operated multiple accounts in an effort to skew the articles relating to naked short selling, Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne, and Gary Weiss himself.

Those unfamiliar with Wikipedia policy might not appreciate just how big a deal this really is.

It’s very satisfying to see so much support for the claim that has, over the past year, created so much misery for the few who have believed it.

That misery was occasioned, in large part, by the inexplicable obstructionism of Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales, who intervened on multiple occasions to halt efforts threatening to tie Weiss to his many wiki sockpuppet identities.

Initially, it seemed reasonable to assume that Wales’s unreasonable behavior was based on bad information, and that he was otherwise acting in good faith.

That changed, however, when several of Wales’s contributions to a very small and private email list were recently leaked to me.

Of these, the most interesting, dated September 15, 2007, reads as follows:

From: jwales@wikia.com (Jimbo Wales)
I just want to go on record as saying that I believe the reason for this is that Mantanmoreland is in fact Gary Weiss.

Before lauding Wales’s apparent enlightenment on this topic, note the comment he made one month later, in reference to his support of an effort to block model Wikipedia editor Cla68 from making the most reasonable changes to the Gary Weiss article autobiography:

“Cla68, I fear that you have been manipulated by lying stalkers and trolls…”

In case it’s not clear, this is one of Wales’s many references to me as “lying stalker” and “troll.”

Kindly re-read the previous few paragraphs in case the following point is not made crystal clear to you: in private, Wales admitted knowing that I was correct about Gary Weiss, and yet in public, continued protecting Weiss, defaming me and castigating those who recognized and acted upon the truth as reported here.

What could possibly motivate someone to be not only deceitful, but deeply, irresponsibly and libelously deceitful?

Before you answer, consider the insights we can glean from the examples of Rachel Marsden and Jeff Merkey.

Rachel Marsden
Marsden is a controversial Canadian media personality and political consultant whose Wikipedia article has consistently tended toward the disproportionately negative.

While the full extent of their relationship is unknown, the emergence of a series of IM chat transcripts between Marsden and Wales makes it clear that in early February of this year, the relationship was…shall we say…a physical one.

Confronted with an overwhelming body of evidence, Wales conceded to a single “meeting” with Marsden, which took place on February 9, 2008.

While other evidence would suggest Wales isn’t telling the truth here, let us none-the-less focus on the circumstances surrounding that meeting.

In the following excerpted IM chat exchange between Wales and Marsden leading up to the February 9 meeting (originally published in Valleywag.com), the two discuss a specific point of inaccuracy in her article.

Wales: I wrote an email to the internal editors list about your entry recommending some changes, etc. I said that I would run it by you for clarification/comment and email again if there were any updates I think we have two major problems right now first, the timeline is wrong about the recent cop case… that is the worst error and easy to fix

Wales: right so the way it is told now, hang on a second let’s actually do this right now because the last thing I want to do is take a break from f**king your brains out all night to work on your wikipedia entry

“In September 2007, on her blog Marsden wrote about and posted a picture of a counterterrorism officer for the Ontario Provincial Police with whom she had an affair. She claimed that he had leaked secret anti-terrorism documents to her, then posted email messages from him as evidence that he had been pursuing her, and sent to the National Post these along with sexually explicit pictures of him that she had received. She was investigated for criminal harassment for this behaviour, but was not charged. The OPP’s criminal investigations branch cleared the officer of any wrongdoing.”

so our timeline is wrong we say
(1) wrote about him on your blog
(2) posted email messages from him
(3) as a result he files harassment charges

Marsden: exactly. it was a retaliatory complaint on his part that was launched 2 months after they initiated their investigation into his stuff.

Wales: but the correct timeline is
(1) wrote about him on the blog
(2) he files harassment charges
(3) you post email messages to show how his harassment charges are bullshit

Marsden: you’re a sh*tdisturber. right I only posted the emails after he went public trying to create trouble. NOT before that.

Wales: so we can get that sorted and then this makes the story clearer

Marsden: that’s good of you to do. really.

Comparing the substance of this chat session with the edit history of the Rachel Marsden article in the days leading up to February 9, 2008, we see something rather striking: On February 7, wikipedian Guy Chapman (aka “JzG”) commits two changes (1)(2) which have the net effect of making precisely the content alterations Marsden requested.

Jeff Merkey
Merkey is a computer scientist and entrepreneur whose Wikipedia article came under attack by several editors critical of his professional associations.

According to Merkey, in 2006, Wales told him that in exchange for a substantial donation, Wales could use his influence to make Merkey’s article more agreeable, and to place Merkey himself under Wales’s “special protection” as an editor.

Merkey made a $5,000 donation and hinted at the possibility of something much larger in the future.

Merkey claims, and the record confirms, that following his donation, Wales personally made several edits to the Merkey article, including a complete blanking of the article and destruction of its edit history (extreme steps to take under any circumstances, and doubly so considering it happened without any effort at reaching consensus, which is supposedly the coin of the Wikipedia realm).

When he announced his unilateral “start-over” on the article, Wales offered:

I have deleted the old discussion because of the unpleasantness of it. Please be extra careful here to be courteous and assume good faith. We are nearing a resolution of this longstanding conflict. Play nice, everyone.

A priceless response came 20 minutes later by wikipedian Aim Here, who asked:

“…Have you been making secret dealings behind everyone’s back? So much for Wikipedia’s openness.”

To which Wales nervously responded:

“Secret dealings? What on earth are you talking about?”

To which wikipedian Aim Here replied:

Whether or not the original article was a mess, you did use the phrase ‘nearing a restitution of this longstanding conflict’, which suggests, despite the complete lack of evidence available in public, that there is an actual conflict going on, as opposed to one which had been completely dormant for ages now. After all, suddenly and with no warning, wiping out an article and ordering everyone to start again over some sourcing problems is rather heavy-handed and drastic. The normal WP procedure is to stick some tags on it and telling everyone to change the bad bits. The ’secret deals’ phrase was of course total speculation, and sorry about that, but I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t something happening in private that sparked off this wholesale deletion of yours, either a deal or a threatened lawsuit. After all, pretty much the last thing Merkey said on this whole stupid subject was that he had been trying, in private, to throw $2 million at you and/or Wikipedia and threatening his usual bag of lawsuits. Well, whatever…

If this exchange seems familiar, it may be because it roughly resembles this one, which followed Jimbo Wales’ unilateral blanking of the debate over the proposed deletion of the article autobiography on Gary Weiss:

The page contained wildly inappropriate speculation that a notable author was sockpuppeting. As I am sure you are aware, many authors have had their careers badly damaged by being caught sockpuppeting at Amazon, etc., and it is deeply wrong for people to ask me to restore a page with such speculations in Wikipedia after the claims have already been investigated and dismissed. If there are further problems in the future, there will be no problem restoring the article at that time.

As an aside, based on Wales’s promise that “If there are further problems in the future, there will be no problem restoring the article at that time,” wikipedian Cool Hand Luke asked Jimbo for permission to un-delete the deletion debate in order to reference it during the present ArbCom case relating directly to the matter of Gary Weiss and his conflict of interest on Wikipedia.

Jimbo’s response: “I see no benefit in doing so.”

Conclusion
As the Rachel Marsden example demonstrates, when he’s “getting something” in return, Jimbo Wales is willing to use his position to influence Wikipedia article content.

As the Jeff Merkey example demonstrates, in addition to female companionship, that “something” can also come in the form of donations to the Wikimedia Foundation.

As the Gary Weiss example demonstrates, Jimbo Wales is willing to use Wikipedia as a tool of libel and disinformation when doing so suits him.

Only one question remains: what exactly is Jimbo Wales getting in return for continuing to publicly defame me and shield Gary Weiss from accountability for his two-year campaign of malice and disinformation, in support of illegal stock market manipulation?

We like to think that based on the strength of some of the research on this site, a move to delete the Wikipedia article autobiography of Gary Weiss was undertaken recently.

A longshot from the beginning, that effort failed despite the principled efforts of Cla68, an exemplary contributor and a truly bright light in what can seem an otherwise dark place.

A couple of interesting things happened through the proposed article for deletion (AfD) process. One is that Gary Weiss himself basically came unglued. The other is the subsequent deletion of record of the AfD debate (and with it record of Weiss’s mental decomposition).

As it turns out, the deletion of that debate will be hard to undo, since it came from the top of the Wikipedia organization: Jimbo Wales himself. Wales claims the debate was filled with “discourteous commentary” and as such meriting elimination from the record.

Last week an anonynmous editor asked Jimbo about his decision. That conversation, at least for now, may be read here. Not surprisingly, that editor was soon banned as a WordBomb sockpuppet.

Thanks to an enterprising administrator with the requisite permissions, the deleted debate has been recovered and is reproduced here for your enlightenment. Please inspect it and then comment on what you see as commentary of so discourteous a nature as to require elimination.

Nobody aspires to have “enemies.” I suspect, even the super-villainous would probably prefer to go about their villainy unopposed.

But just as the Yin and the Yang are opposite ends of the same stick, when one acquires a new friend, one often acquires that friend’s enemies, too.

Over the past month, it has become evident that AntiSocialMedia.net, which rarely boasts enough traffic to register on any scale, has acquired the least likely set of enemies: the leadership of Wikipedia (the ninth most popular website on the earth).

I’ll admit, it’s not easy finding the Zen in being on my side of such a grossly unfair fight.

To understand how unfair, I offer some perspective:

• It takes AntiSocialMedia.net about one week to log as many unique visitors as Wikipedia logs in less than one minute.
• Googling “AntiSocialMedia.net” returns 2,327 results.
• Googling “Wikipedia.org” returns 43,100,000 results (7,000,000 more than you get by googling “Google.com”).
• Of the three most frequently-cited sources of Wikipedia criticism (AntiSocialMedia.net, Wikipedia Review and Encyclopedia Dramatica), AntiSocialMedia.net is the smallest, the most obscure, most infrequently updated, most understaffed, and the only one not focused exclusively on “Wikipedia criticism.”

Given these extreme imbalances, how strange that Wikipedia would make AntiSocialMedia.net, the focus of its epic “BADSITES” initiative.

What’s “BADSITES,” you ask?

“BADSITES” apparently beat out “UNGOODSITES” as the shorthand name assigned to the month old (and counting) effort by the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) to officially forbid any reference to AntiSocialMeida.net on Wikipedia, under penalty of immediate banning.

To understand how extreme that move is, keep in mind the fact that Wikipedia currently endorses mentions of, and links to, websites that advocate pedophilia, racism, and related moral deprivation. Yet, the one website soon to be stricken as a matter of official Wikipedia, and which ArbCom member Fred Bauder claims “displays moral depravity,” is the one you’re reading now.

There have literally been scores, and likely more, of instances where the mere questioning of the validity of the claims against AntiSocialMedia.net results in immediate banning and removal of the comment.

If there is Zen to be found in these atrocities, it’s the de facto confirmation of the existence of “thoughtcrime” on Wikipedia.

Here’s a perfect example, engineered by me specifically to demonstrate this point.

For a month, a carefully managed discussion of the issues surrounding BADSITES has been taking place on a half-dozen sufficiently cloistered corners of Wikipedia. This is where naive and well-meaning editors go to die.

One week ago, User:Greenstick Break (previously created by me) jumped into the middle of one of these conversations to ask Fred Bauder what should have been the obvious question.

(Note: this is actually a two-fer, in that Fred’s comment nicely confirms one of the central theses of this site, as well as the searing dishonesty of Gary Weiss/Mantanmoreland.)

Fred Bauder: “…For example, one claim is that Matamoreland (sic) uses sockpuppets. Well, he did, when he first started editing two years ago. And he got caught, was warned, AND QUIT USING SOCKPUPPETS…”

Greenstick Break: “Now help me out here, Fred. You just confirmed that WordBomb was correct when he said Mantanmoreland was using socks. In another venue you confirmed that WordBomb was correct when he said Mantanmoreland had a [conflict of interest] problem. Whether or not you think the User:SlimVirgin/ User:Sweet Blue Water connection + User:jayjg oversight issue is a problem, I think it’s generally understood that WordBomb got those facts right, too.
Yet WordBomb is the one that’s banned and whose site cannot be named???
Will somebody PLEASE show me what WordBomb got so wrong as to justify all this?”

It took less than four minutes from the time that comment was posted until the time ArbCom member Jpgordon had removed it and banned Greenstick Break, claiming (impossibly), that he had managed to squeeze a completed CheckUser search in there, as well.

Greenstick Break mounted a tepid defense, partly for show and partly to force Jpgordon to actually consult CheckUser (as you’ll see, that was a necessary part of this plan).

About 45 minutes later, while Jpgordon remained actively editing, I created User:Fjse44 via precisely the same connection, IP address and browser (with all cookies intact) that I had used when editing as Greenstick Break just moments before.

I wanted it to be very easy for Jpgordon or any other CheckUser to know, if they cared at all, that Greenstick Break and Fjse44 belonged to the same banned user.

The only thing that made Fjse44 different from Greenstick Break was sentiment, as I used the account (for the greater good and while holding my nose) to respond dismissively to a perfectly logical comment by Dan Tobias on the same page as Greenstick Break’s.

*Dan T.*: “One should note that The New York Times linked to ASM when it was relevant to a controversy they were covering. But I guess we’re so much more mature, sophisticated, and tasteful in our editorial judgment than they are.”

Fjse44: “The New York Times gets to set its content policies as we do ours. Apples/oranges.”

Ten days later, the pro-BADSITES comment remains in place, and pro-BADSITES commenter Fjse44 remains a Wikipedian in good standing (though that will likely change soon, now that Fjse44 is tied to WordBomb).

The take home lesson here is that under otherwise identical circumstances, Jpgordon banned one user based entirely on his opinion.

That is thoughtcrime.

Normally, this lack of judgment would land even an ArbCom member in hot water. But by now, any sentient observer of the process has seen enough to know that when it comes to AntiSocialMedia.net, the rules have been officially suspended.

Here’s a beautiful example of Wikipedia’s new thoughtcrime paradigm.

It’s a portion of an exchange between the uncommonly gutsy User:G-Dett (whom I’m reticent to praise for fear of what might befall her) and User:Ryulong, shortly after the latter banned User:Onomato as a WordBomb sockpuppet, based on nothing more than his having made some minor changes to the Wikipedia article on Patrick Byrne.

G-Dett : “Would it be fair to say that Wikipedia’s current working definition of a WordBomb sockpuppet is anyone whose edits focus (either wholly or in part) on naked-short-selling -related articles, and who opposes User:Mantanmoreland and User:Samiharris?”

Ryūlóng: “They would be common traits as far as I know.”

G-Dett : “Of course they’re common traits; my question was whether they’re enough for a positive ID.”

Ryūlóng: “I would say so.”

Thoughtcrime. You may not like it, but at least it’s out in the open now.

Having laid that foundation, allow me to return to my initial point: that there’s an enormous disconnect between what’s been published on AntiSocialMedia.net so far, and the severity of Wikipedia leadership’s response to it.

I believe the reason these efforts are aimed against AntiSocialMedia.net, as opposed to the other, more obvious targets, is that I alone possess the past Wikipedia database dumps which, through analysis of what has since been covertly removed, provide unambiguous roadmaps of disturbing behavior at the highest levels of Wikipedia leadership.

I believe their primary concern – and the motive for such Orwellian behavior – is not for what I have published, but for what they know, based on the data in my possession, I potentially could publish.

Nobody aspires to have “enemies,” particularly when ambushed by a brass knuckle-wielding band of them. But if there is Zen to be found in the experience, it’s realizing that the subjects of my efforts – my self appointed “enemies” – appear to place a higher value upon my work than even I do.

This post will take you on a little journey which promises to be very satisfying by the time it’s done, but will require your full attention to get there. HINT: you’re free to take notes if it will help. Arriving at our destination, you can expect to have learned, as we have, that Gary Weiss is quite actively engaged in deception on other people’s blogs, in addition to his own. Furthermore, by the time we’re done, you’ll have found new levels of ironic significance in these words:

“Bravely spoken, by the coward who hides behind a pseudonym.”

And here we go…
The first thing you need to understand is that in late January of 2006, Gary Weiss’ IP address was 70.23.85.112.

Here’s how we know that.

The website Wikipedia endeavors to be an online encyclopedia that anybody can make changes to. Fortunately for mankind, a record is kept of each of those changes. Here’s just such a record: a summary of edits made by a user at the IP address 70.23.85.112.

Note the date range: January 27-28, 2006, and the article edited: Naked short selling. Such rapid succession of edits, as seen here, is suggestive of what’s called an “edit war.”
Now, let’s look at who else was editing that article during that period, to learn more about this edit war.

Starting at the bottom and working up, we see the editor identified by the IP address 70.23.85.112 editing heavily until 7:19pm when that user’s edits abruptly cease.

79 minutes later, a brand new user calling himself Mantanmoreland arrives, picking up right where 70.23.85.112 left off. A few days later, Tomstoner arrives, forging an unusually strong “tag team” relationship with Mantanmoreland. Together, Mantanmoreland and Tomstoner become the primary antagonists of the novice and disorganized bloc of Wikipedian naked shorting opponents.

On February 20, 2006, as if to put a fork in their soundly defeated opposition, Tomstoner adds a link to Gary Weiss’ blog to the naked short selling article.

Fast forward six weeks.

On April 6, Gary Weiss sees his second book published. Bravo, Gary.
On April 9, Tomstoner adds a reference to the three-day-old book on the article about Gary Weiss’ alma mater, the City College of New York.
On April 13, Mantanmoreland creates the Gary Weiss article on Wikipedia, and goes on to take ownership of it, including going so far as to know when one Weiss quote is more suitable than another.
On April 14, Mantanmoreland adds a link to a nearly decade-old Business Week article originally written by Gary Weiss
On April 15, Mantanmoreland decides the article on Arthur Leavitt would be better with a link to the nine-day-old book by Gary Weiss.
On April 17, Mantanmoreland adds a link to the first book by Gary Weiss
On April 30, Mantanmoreland feels one more article could benefit from a reference to the three-week old book by Gary Weiss.
Make that two more articles
On May 13, Lastexit, one of Mantanmoreland’s admitted “sockpuppet” alter-egos, feels the article about Julian Robertson could benefit from a link to a six-year-old bit of journalism by Gary Weiss.
On May 19, Mantanmoreland decides the article on hedge funds is incomplete without a link to the Weiss Book.
On July 12, Lastexit concludes that a three year old Business Week piece on naked shorting penned by Gary Weiss would perfectly round out the Wikipedia article on the same topic.

Anybody not convinced that 70.23.85.112 = Mantanmoreland = Tomstoner = Lastexit = Gary Weiss raise your hand.

Ok good. So we can all agree that in late January, 2006, 70.23.85.112 = Gary Weiss (remember that…it’s on the final exam!).

Now, let’s go back to January 22, 2006.

On that day, two relevant things happened.

First, the New York Post published an effusive review of the Gary Weiss book, which would not go on to be available for purchase for another 3.5 months.

Second, Yahoo user ID lamborghini751 is created and soon makes his first message board post in the form of a question as to his “wife’s” career options.

Four minutes later, his second post, to Yahoo’s Overstock.com message board, announces to the world that Gary’s book, though a full financial quarter away, had been the subject of a glowing review by the New York Post.

On January 24, 2006, Yahoo user ID cupandsaucerwithsugar is created. As his first act, at 1:29 pm EST, he provides an answer to lamborghini751’s two day old question.

(A quick scan of the subsequent postings of both lamborghini751 and cupandsaucerwithsugar makes it obvious that the same person is behind both. But Yahoo’s delightful dissembler sorting algorithm bug confirms this, as those familiar with the DSA will easily see.)

As his second act, less than 60 seconds after the first, cupandsaucerwithsugar chooses to honor Gary Weiss, as follows:

“yeah and weiss just ripped boobo and co a new one on his blog”

How sweet.For those keeping track at home, that post brings us to 1:30 EST on January 24, 2006.
Interestingly, according to the header info on the sample chapter posted on his website, Weiss’ publisher would complete the book’s soft proof 82 minutes later, at 2:52pm.

So what had the NY Post reviewer been reading?

Hmmmm.

Nevermind such details!

Six hours later, at 8:35pm, Gary Weiss publishes a new blog post, which opens thusly:

“Bob O’Brien,” the bravely anonymous leader of the Baloney Brigade…

Just 25 minutes later, on the above-mentioned Bob O’Brien’s blog, first time commenter cupsandsaucer has this to say to the same Bob O’Brien:

Bravely spoken, by the coward who hides behind a pseudonym.

A quick review of the corresponding server log entry (time zone set to GMT) confirms what we all already suspect, and poetically brings us full circle:

How much more ironic is the accusation,

…coward who hides behind a pseudonym…

when you consider it was posted by cupandsaucer Gary Weiss (aka 70.23.85.112, Mantanmoreland, Lastexit, Tomstoner, Lamborghini715, and cupandsaucerwithsugar), who’s turned pseudonymity into a way of life?

There has been much speculation as to the root of Gary Weiss’s abiding interest in the personalities voicing their objections to the practice of illegal naked short securities trading.

In February of this year, some felt that question was answered in the form of a minor yet tremendously significant incident from which it could be fairly deduced that Weiss was, on the morning of January 19, 2007, using a computer on the network of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC).

The basis of that deduction is explained in detail here.

Given the enormous value of the financial assets over which the DTCC is steward, and the high level of security that must necessarily mediate access to the organization’s premises, much less data networks, one can immediately rule out any scenario in which Weiss might have been using that computer in anything other than a sanctioned capacity.

Over four days, DTCC Spokesman Stuart Goldstein ignored two emailed requests for comment on this situation. When he finally did respond to a third request received by a staffer over the phone, it was in the form of a blank email. A quick request to re-send the missing content was denied, and five repeat requests over the space of one week were ignored.

Then, in one of the strangest turns of events observed in this saga to date, on February 9, 2007, Goldstein’s reply was delivered, unprompted, by New York Post reporter Roddy Boyd.

From: Boyd, Roddy

Date: Feb 09 2007 – 1:03pm

Subject:

judd,

I spoke to corp comm at DTCC and they told me, on the record, that weiss is not, nor has he ever, been employed or used by DTCC in any capacity, formally or informally. They categorically reject it and tell me that none of them have any recollection of ever talking to him, meeting with him or having any dealings with him.

categorically rejects it.

thats a big hump for a real reporter to get over.

let me put this politely:

As an investigative reporter, laughably per PB, you really, really are a much better PR person.

Lest its meaning be lost on anybody, please carefully re-read and reflect on the sweeping significance of Mr. Boyd’s second sentence:

They categorically reject it and tell me that none of them have any recollection of ever talking to [Gary Weiss], meeting with him or having any dealings with him.

Now, please carefully read and consider the meaning of the following:

In recent weeks, a confidential source has delivered to AntiSocialMedia.net multiple emails, all pre-dating Mr. Boyd’s DTCC proxy denials, in which Gary Weiss refers to active consultations between himself and unnamed DTCC officials on a specific media-related matter.

These emails make no reference to the basis (whether paid or otherwise) of the relationship, but given the extreme lengths to which DTCC leadership has gone to deny so much as a conversation with Weiss, this development is suggestive of what can only be interpreted as unmitigated deception at the highest levels within that organization.

In February, Weiss called claims of a relationship between himself and the DTCC “absolute crap.”

Wishing to rule out the possibility that Roddy Boyd delivered anything but an accurate reflection of the DTCC’s position, earlier this week Stuart Goldstein was asked to affirm the accuracy of Boyd’s statement, as well as to comment on the existence of unspecified evidence that Gary R. Weiss has or has had a professional relationship with the DTCC.

Goldstein’s pithy reply consisted of three words:

From: Stuart Goldstein

date: May 23, 2007 3:01 PM

Subject: Re: Request for comment

Send your evidence.

Because the nature of the evidence does nothing to change the facts at hand, and in order to honor commitments of confidentiality made to sources, Goldstein’s request was not honored.

An additional request for comment has been ignored by Goldstein.

Given the length to which Goldstein has gone to obscure the truth in this matter, and the length to which Weiss regularly goes to specifically malign critics of the DTCC’s defense of illegal and abusive stock trade settlement failures, a disturbing picture of that organization’s policy of defamatory, surrogate-driven, scorched-earth public relations is beginning to emerge.

Update: 5/31/2007

An alert reader brings to our attention an earlier incident appearing to confirm Goldstein’s lax regard for truth when confronted with questions relating to the DTCC’s role in empowering illegal market manipulation by crooked stock lenders.

The following originally appeared here on May 11, 2004.

FinancialWire received a confidential email between a reporter and Stuart Z. Goldstein, Managing Director of Corporate Communications for the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. in which Goldstein was represented as denying that a lawsuit filed by Nanopierce Technologies exists.

The chief spokesperson for the DTCC, whose board of directors represent a who’s who of financial entities, including Lehman Brothers, Citigroup / Solomon Smith Barney’s Corporate Investment Bank, and Morgan Stanley, was quoted as stating that the “lawsuit” did not exist and was simply “charges being leveled by internet crackpots.”

FinancialWire sent Goldstein a scanned copy of the actual court filing, which occurred April 29 at 12:15 p.m., and asked Goldstein if he or the DTCC still denied its existence or had any comments. No response was received.

It would be strange, but not unreasonable, had Goldstein himself not yet heard of the lawsuit when asked. But if that were the case, the proper response would be to explain as much. Instead, Goldstein was dismissive and insulting: the general embodiment of his employer.

But beyond Goldstein’s obviously striking social shortcomings, these are the mannerisms of an organization with something dark to hide, but utterly lacking in accountability.

What is that dark thing?

We know that it includes records of billions upon billions of dollars of failed stock trades (the one thing the DTCC is tasked with completing successfully). Some allege that beyond the records, there is also proof that elements within the DTCC are profiting wildly from this fraud.

Given what I’ve seen, I’m inclined to believe it’s true.

At some point on December 4, 2006, the number of reviews of Gary Weiss’s book Wall Street Versus America dropped from 17 to 10, as all of the following reviewers’ contributions were deleted:

Burton (Baltimore, MD)
Dave Watson (Banning, CA)
Luminiere (Miami)
George (Needham, MA)
Marty Ross (Houston, Texas)
Rich Golden (New York, NY USA)
Ted Dichtler (Monroe, NY)

Jim O’Reilly (New York, NY USA), who did not review Weiss’s book, also saw his 16 reviews deleted.

You’ll note that five of the above eight names (in bold) are the same five we concluded were being deceptively used by Gary Weiss to artificially boost his book’s sales while artificially depressing others.

Of course the reviews in situ are gone and the links to them broken, but we will soon post the full text, which we saved pre-delete, here.

We had concluded that the additional three users were also Gary Weiss, but limited our initial report to five, given the need to conserve space and the ease of proving as much.

Our complete list, for those of you playing at home, also includes the following:

Chuck T. (Chicago, IL)
Elliot Baker (Red Bank, NJ)
Johannsen (Atlanta)
Raymond Stella (New York, NY)

At this point, it’s unclear who deleted these reviews, whether it was Amazon administrators or Gary Weiss himself (as users may delete or edit their own reviews) but the following incident suggests it was Gary.

Soon after the reviews were discovered to be missing, a poster on an investorvillage.com message board noted that the user page of Jim O’Reilly, while devoid of reviews, retained a link to Jim O’Reilly’s “Wish List.” Upon clicking the link, he found “Gary Weiss’s Wish List.” A cut and paste version of it can be seen here.

Within minutes of posting this odd Weiss/O’Reilly connection, the wish list was also deleted. We hypothesize that the account was originally called Gary Weiss and the name was changed to Jim O’Reilly at some point, though the name on the wish list was not.

We applaud Gary Weiss for deleting eight of his deceptive reviewer accounts and call on him to now remove the additional four noted above.

Preface and editor’s note: AntiSocialMedia.net has issues with Gary Weiss, not his wife. As is happens, one of the more startling examples of abuse of social media we’ve discovered anywhere – and the central theme of this, the third part of this series on Gary Weiss – cannot be told without making reference to that relationship.However, because her identity is ultimately not material to this situation, we shall only refer to her as “Mrs. Weiss” (though Weiss is not her real last name) and have set this site’s comment filter to immediately reject any comments that contain either her first or last name. Comments containing any other personally identifying information belonging to Mrs. Weiss will be immediately deleted and the commenter barred from further use of this site.

Background: In parts one and two of this four part series, we established that Gary Weiss is the would-be anonymous writer of the blog dubbed Mediacrity, which considers itself “A media insider’s occasional rants on goofs, bias and hypocrisy in the media.”

Also, a prior post on this blog demonstrated Gary Weiss’s proclivity for creating fake Amazon.com book reviews for the purpose of boosting of his own books’ ratings while deflating the ratings of those authors with whom Gary has tangled in the past.

You’ll need to keep both of those facts in mind as you read the following.

While researching links between Gary Weiss and the targets of his abusive Amazon.com book reviews, we hit a dead end when it came to understanding exactly what Gary had against author Ian Williams, whose two books were trashed by reviewers Ted Dichtler (reviews since deleted) and Raymond Stella in the spring of 2005. What made this instance so curious was the fact that soon after we announced the forthcoming investigation on the topic of Weiss’s fabricated Amazon.com reviews, Gary Weiss (as Ted Dichtler) quietly deleted his one-star thrashing of Williams’ book, United Nations for Beginners, replacing it with a tepid review of another author’s book about the UN.

The Williams book review, which we captured prior to Gary’s replacement of it, read as follows:

Trash. A superficial book that offers a la-la land version of the UN, failing to mention entire areas in which the UN has failed miserably.
Also, since it was recently disclosed that Ian Williams has actually worked for the UN as a media trainer and pamphlet writer, it seems to me that the validity of this book is entirely questionable. He boasts about his UN work on his website. That only adds to the tastelessness of this rubbish. (Ted Dichtler)

Most would probably consider those sentiments a little harsh for an illustrated book aimed at school-aged kids.

While we did finally discover the reason for Gary’s acrimony toward Ian Williams, that knowledge arrived too late to be included in the Amazon.com review fabrication story.

Which is why we’re telling you about it now.

Two independent sources confirm that Gary Weiss’s wife was at one time credentialed as a reporter for the Pioneer of India newspaper, covering the United Nations. As a credentialed UN correspondent, Mrs. Weiss was eligible to join the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA), which she did. Subsequently she sought a paid position with UNCA, held at the time by Ian Williams’s wife. Mrs. Weiss had apparently sought other paid positions within the UN proper as well. Williams, UN correspondent for The Nation, was former UNCA president.

For reasons that don’t matter now (but will explored in part four), in March of 2005, Mrs. Weiss lost her media credentials and was ordered never to set foot on UN property again. Obviously, she was also taken out of consideration for any position within the UN and UNCA that she had sought.

Those familiar with the situation feel Mrs. Weiss blamed Williams for the circumstances surrounding this unfortunate turn of fate.

A few days after this incident, Gary Weiss – through Amazon.com reviewer Ted Dichtler, called Ian Williams’ book “trash.”

Exactly 30 days after that, Weiss launched the Mediacrity blog, and with it, an attempt at a recurring series called, “Hypocrites on Parade,” focusing on Ian Williams.

Weiss’s first examination of Williams in Mediacrity reads in part as follows:

…Williams is a fourth-rate hack. But fourth-rate hackdom has not prevented other ethics-deprived journos from being publicly pilloried. What is keeping Williams from the gallows?
… If you go on his website, http://www.ianwilliams.info/, you see what I’m talking about–if you can read it. This guy is such a dummy that he’s got black print on a dark blue background.

We feel secure in classifying the above as “mean-spirited.”

“Hypocrites on Parade” would go on to be replaced by “Creeps on Parade” and dozens of drive-by attacks on Williams, in which he is named, among other things: “The Payola Pundit,” “Fourth-rate Hack” (later promoted to “Fifth-rate Hack”), and “Bloated UN Minister of Propaganda.”

The final part of this series, coming very soon, examines the strange circumstances surrounding Mrs. Weiss’s gaining and losing her media credentials, the role Gary Weiss played in that process, and a new wrinkle that even we find difficult to believe.

Let’s start by re-stating three key facts as established in Part One.

1. In June of 1995, Gary Weiss told the world that his personal email address was garywbw@aol.com.
2. Gary would go on to use that account to identify himself when posting on Usenet newsgroups for the next 10 years.
3. Primary among those newsgroups were soc.culture.jewish (scj) and its moderated (scjm) subgroup.

During garywbw’s decade long tenure on that newsgroup, several regular and semi-regular posters emerged, including:

• Yitz pascalamb@aol.com / pascalamb@verizon.net
• Daveumansky daveumansky@aol.com / daveumansky@verizon.net
• Ted tdichtler@hotmail.com
• Teddydichtler teddydichtler@hotmail.com
• Tdicktler tdicktler@hotmail.com
• Annieschwartz annieschwartz@hotmail.com
• Brenda catallergest@aol.com

These eight accounts often posted in close temporal proximity to one another, usually in support of each other’s increasingly venomous flame-wars with an uncommonly obnoxious contingent of anti-Semitic trolls.

Then, exactly two years ago on December 20, 2004, Gary found himself in a fix, which you can read unfold in its entirety here, or summarized below.

Basically, fellow scjm newsgroup user cindys confronted garywbw as follows:

cindys: Hey, Gary! I’m really curious to know why you didn’t share with us that you and Dave Umansky are the same person?

garywbw: If this is a joke…you’ll have to tell me the punch line.

cindys: It’s not a joke. A poster on another group, someone who never posted to that particular group before yesterday, told me that I seemed like a “pretty bright person” and gave me weblink to a certain yahoo group and suggested that I might like to read that particular yahoo group for a while. When I clicked over there, I found that “Daveumansky” was a sometime poster to that group and guess what his email address was? garywbw@yahoo.com How do you explain that?

Garywbw: Well, I can’t explain it and I have no idea how that can be, since I don’t have a yahoo address and have never heard of a “daveumansky” or even heard of the existence of same until you mentioned it. So I think someone is pulling your leg. I don’t see the humor, frankly.

Despite his protestations and ten year posting history, within a few days of this exchange garywbw would disappear from Usenet forever.

In December of 2004, cindys referred to an undisclosed Yahoo group whose membership included a user named daveumansky with email garywbw@yahoo.com.

A year earlier, the Yahoo Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) group counted among its active members a user named garywbw, whose email address was daveumansky@aol.com.

By June of 2005, garywbw was replaced by username stopthewarrrrr, though the email address remained daveumansky@aol.com.

By exploiting Yahoo’s dissembler sorting algorithm bug, we learn that indeed, garywbw@yahoo.com = stopthewarrrrr@yahoo.com = daveumanskyfromny@yahoo.com.

On another Yahoo group, this one dedicated to Gary Weiss’s high school alma mater Bronx High School of Science, we observe garywbw using the email address pascalamb@aol.com, and this time, conveniently, Gary signs off using his real name and high school graduation year: 1971.

Usenet posts carry with them header data that’s hidden by default, but which includes important information identifying the origin of a post.

Look at this post by Yitz with its header data included (limited to the most relevant data below):

From: "Yitz"

Date: 18 Nov 2005 17:51:21 -0800

NNTP-Posting-Host: 70.23.102.179

 Compare that with this post by Ted (truncated below):

From: "Ted"

Date: 27 Nov 2005 09:25:49 -0800

NNTP-Posting-Host: 70.23.102.179

Note that between the two posts, one element is identical: Posting-Host. This means both of these posts, while nine days apart, were made from the same computer.

In fact, identical Posting-Host data are also shared by daveumansky, teddydichtler, tdicktler, Ted, annieschwartz and Brenda, suggesting they’re all the same person.

The IP address used in the above example (70.23.102.179) is owned by Verizon and assigned to dsl customers in the pool designated as NY325. Most subscribers in that pool see their IP address (and thus Posting-Host) address change randomly, on roughly a monthly basis.

Some time in the first half of December, 2005, the Posting-Host of garywbw, daveumansky, teddydichtler, tdicktler, Ted, annieschwartz and Brenda all changed to 70.23.42.100 in unison: consistent with a single user scenario posited here.

The point of this exercise is conclusively demonstrate that Gary Weiss = garywbw = daveumansky = pascalamb = Yitz = Ted Dichtler

And here’s why that’s really important…

In April of 2005, a blog called Mediacrity appeared, calling itself a “media insider’s occasional rant on goofs, bias and hypocrisy in the media.”

Mediacrity’s inaugural post is dated April 24, 2005. The first reference to Mediacrity on Usenet occurs the next day, thanks to Ted Dichtler, who read that first post and comments “this guy nailed it on the head.”

Within two hours of Mediacrity’s second post, Dichtler is back on Usenet spreading the word.

This time two interesting things happen.

First, a real person, Susan Cohen, asks Ted to clarify the identity of Alison Weir, the post’s subject. Soon thereafter, Mediacrity appends the post with:

A reader informs me that the Jew-baiting pinhead who met with Okrent is not to be confused with a distinguished historian also named Alison Weir.

Second, a couple of days later a new poster arrives on the thread started by Dichtler. His name is Rick Ruby, and his email address is: mediacrity@hotmail.com (the original email used by the writer of Mediacrity, recently replaced by a gmail account).

To be certain, let’s compare the header data of Ted Dichtler and Rick Ruby’s respective posts.

Ted Dichtler (full version here):

From: "Ted"

Date: 26 Apr 2005 12:10:24 -0700

NNTP-Posting-Host: 64.12.116.66

Rick Ruby (full version here)

From: "Rick Ruby"

Date: 29 Apr 2005 07:03:57 -0700

NNTP-Posting-Host: 64.12.116.66

The IP data (corresponding to AOL at that point) are identical, confirming Ted Dichtler and Rick Ruby posted from the same location, and are most likely the same person.

At this point, it seems we can confidently add two elements to the growing list of identities that begins with Gary Weiss:

Gary Weiss = garywbw = daveumansky = pascalamb = Yitz = Ted Dichtler = Rick Ruby = Mediacrity blogger.

If each of those relationships is accurate, this chain of equalities may also be correctly expressed as Gary Weiss = Mediacrity blogger.

Knowing Gary is the blogger behind Mediacrity opens up a whole universe of conflicts and complications to examine, as we shall do in Part Three of this series, set for publication on Saturday, December 23, 2006.

————————————————

Bonus material: a little running up of the score

“Ted Dichtler” as the name of one of the five fake amazon.com book reviewers we demonstrated were created and abused by Gary Weiss to artificially boost his own books’ ratings while artificially depressing the ratings of those authors who’ve tangled with him in the past.

“Catallergest” (see the email address of Brenda above) is the nickname used by Marty Ross, another of Weiss’s false Amazon.com book reviewer sockpuppets whose reviews have since been deleted.

“Chuck T” is among the remaining five amazon.com reviewers we claim Gary Weiss created and used abusively, but whose reviews have yet to be deleted. According to Technorati.com, Mediacrity belongs to chucktatum, presumably named for the character of the same name starring in the 50s flick “Ace in the Hole” and seen in this image, which is also used on the Mediacrity About Me page.

A reader tells me that originally, Technorati.com listed “Ted Dichtler” as the owner of Mediacrity. We’ve yet to find independent verification of this claim, but are inclined to believe it.

Except for a brief note on Nov. 1, 2006, Mediacrity went dark from Sept.10 – Nov.21: a period encompassing the unprecedented break in Gary Weiss’s blogging and Wikipedia editing seen while Gary was in India.

When attempting to understand the nature of a specific pathology, it’s wise to seek information about its origins in the context of the subject’s history.

This is the first of a four part series on the origins of the pathology apparently afflicting our subject, Gary Weiss. This pathology is manifest as a compulsion to invent false identities online for personal gain, and, when discovered, to lie, deny, and attack his accusers.

Gary himself provides a beautiful launching point in the form of a story written for Business Week in June of 1995, entitled Online Investing. Around halfway, Gary offers this lynchpin piece of information:

My AOL address is Garywbw@aol.com. I also have a Prodigy address (NNEL28A@prodigy.com) and an address at an Internet provider known as NETCOM On-Line Communication Services Inc.: garyrw@ix.netcom.com. But initially, I was only at AOL.

It seems safe to assume that garywbw stands for “Gary Weiss Business Week.”

It also seems safe to assume that in 1995, Gary Weiss was among the many oblivious to the future implications of printing one’s personal email address in Business Week.

That future is here.

Exactly six months prior to Gary’s publication of his email address in Business Week, he made what appears to be his first newsgroup posting, to the misc.writing group.

The next post made as garywbw wouldn’t come until September of 1996, simply reading:

Looking for people who have had any dealings with [Monitor Investments, Global Equities Grp., State Street, Norfolk, Biltmore], as well as Sovereign Equity Management and First Hanover. Kindly email me at garywbw@aol.com.

Three months later, part one of Gary Weiss’s BusinessWeek story The Mob on Wall Street would make extensive reference to four of the firms inquired about in the above post.

Point being, garywbw@aol.com is our Gary Weiss.

Garywbw spends the first part of 1997 as a surprisingly constructive participant in a few support-related groups. Then, in March of that year, we see Gary’s first, fateful post to the newsgroup soc.culture.jewish:

This newsgroup sucks

Is there a better one somewhere — a moderated one, preferably to keep out the kooks, flames and so on? One where “Jewish culture” is actually discussed? Pls advise.

We consider that post “fateful,” because it represents Gary’s first apparent contribution to the newsgroup where the seeds of his habitual deception were sown.

Part two of this series examines a few of those seeds; and, if we may be so bold, will likely freak you out.