8) The Hijacking of Social Media

I would like to address the one interesting and worthwhile point made by the toy army deployed to attack this effort and those people presumed to be part of it.

It came in the form of a question posted to Yahoo’s Overstock.com message board by topangan90065, which reads as follows:

Take a good look at antisocialmedia.net

Go ahead. Take a good look at antisocialmedia.net. Read every word. Help me figure it out.

Just who is the target audience supposed to be? I don’t think anyone not already immersed in the Arcana of Baloney could make heads nor tails of it. You would have at least to have heard of Gary Weiss, and to have given him some credit to be discredited.

And for those of us who ARE immersed, pro or con, what is the goal here? What would it take to make someone STOP thinking Bob is full O’Baloney, and STOP thinking Patty is Wacky?

And suppose, against all odds, they should finally succeed in completely discrediting Gary Weiss?

SO EFFING WHAT? Does that wash out even one KILO of CRUD from the Overstock Warehouse?

Wacky Patty, this whole thing is so DEEPLY WEIRD, it is all past the point of no return.

The question of whom we’re targeting as our audience and what they should learn here is one that this team has been slightly divided over from the beginning.

But here’s what we’ve settled upon:

Just as the existence of a watch requires the existence of a watchmaker, the existence of an organized and well-financed effort to discredit and attack opponents of something requires the existence of proponents of that thing.

In this case, the “thing” is an illegal form of stock market manipulation called strategic failure to deliver. Victims of this form of fraud are many, and include Overstock.com, Novastar Financial and Circle Group Holdings, to name a few (and you’ll understand why those three are mentioned in a moment).

Our goal, from the beginning, has been to demonstrate, with real examples and in real time, the active existence of a “watchmaker” whose job it is to marginalize those who’ve spoken out against the practice of strategic failure to deliver. The past 48 hours have done more than any other period in this blog’s history to demonstrate this and we sincerely thank topangan90065, scippioafricanus, wilburonefor4, azteca_ace, garyweissisright, and the rest of the crew for putting in such long hours for the cause.

That said, let us address a specific point in topangan90065’s comment, but doing so in the context of who topangan90065 really is: Darl J. Dumont of Los Angeles, CA.

Darl, seen here, is a software developer most recently employed by Dolphin Imaging. He at one time lived in Topanga, but now lives nearby, in the 90065 zip code, where the streets are quiet but the incomes don’t generally support heavy duty investing, especially for an old school programmer who at times finds himself freelancing between gigs.

Yet, in the past year, Darl made over 2,540 posts – as many as 55 in one day – to Yahoo message boards. Of those, all but six posts attack three companies: Overstock.com, Novastar Financial, and Z-Trim Holdings (formerly Circle Group Holdings). Of those, the lion’s share of posts are dedicated to attacking the people who run them, especially if they have spoken out against the illegal practice of strategic failure to deliver (following the lead of Gary Weiss, he calls this practice “baloney”).

So when Darl asks:

Just who is the target audience supposed to be? I don’t think anyone not already immersed in the Arcana of Baloney could make heads nor tails of it… And for those of us who ARE immersed, pro or con, what is the goal here? What would it take to make someone STOP thinking Bob [O’Brien] is full O’Baloney, and STOP thinking [Patrick Byrne] is Wacky?

…we hope he appreciates the irony of providing the answer to his own question, and additional weight to our claim.

Post script: In the year since this post was first published, Darl has, very much to his credit, dropped the pseudonym and now posts (at a much lower level) under his real name. Furthermore, his contributions now often border upon objective. The difference, I posit, is anonymity, which I believe will prove to be the Achilles Heel of the Internet.

UPDATE: as explained here, shortly after the following post was published, all of the reviews of each of the five “reviewers” examined were deleted by the reviewer himself, whom we posit to be Gary Weiss. Consequently, the links to the original reviews included in this post lead to blank pages. Still, we leave the post in its original state for your consideration.

Because Gary Weiss was found to be behind the first real example of multi-ID message board bashing to be publicly proved, and because it was apparent from writing and posting styles that one person was making a large percentage of all bashing contributions to the Yahoo boards in particular, we concluded that Gary was generally responsible for most all of it.Well, as we’ve gone on to learn, thanks to more advanced techniques and a few golden tips, we were missing much of the full picture.

The truth is, lately Gary Weiss seems to be playing a decreasingly significant role on the various message boards where the likes of lamborghini751, cupandsaucerwithsugar, state_police_retiree, and bobobaloney once roamed.

And in many places where we long suspected Gary, we’ve instead come to discover Floyd D. Schneider, of Newton, NJ.

Gary: we’re sorry for accusing you of something you didn’t commit…as much as we suspected, anyway.

Floyd: we wish to express our deep disappointment in your decision to make a living out of lying.

Want proof?

Exploiting Yahoo’s Dissembler Sorting Algorithm bug (which we were sworn never, ever to reveal, so please stop asking) we determined that the following seven Yahoo messageboard usernames were tied to the same individual: strethoechasity, returnofstockdung, baloneymarch, zorro20934, china39846, charlesp0nzi, and floydtheoneandonly

Using Google, we found several legal filings, including this one, which make it clear that:

…“floydtheoneandonly,” “charlesp0nzi,” “thetruthseekercom,” are pseudonyms used by Floyd Schneider.”

It seems Schneider has been sued multiple times for making defamatory statements about companies in anonymous message board settings, such as Yahoo and Silicon Investor, and it’s been shown to our satisfaction that he did so for compensation and in coordination with hedge funds shorting the stock (or worse).

In other words, Floyd Schneider is the embodiment of the mythical “paid basher” you’ll find he spends an inordinate amount of time denying exists. In fact, he had been an associate of the convicted naked short seller Anthony Elgindy who, in one of the most famous posts on his siliconinvestor.com website, outted Schneider as a paid stock basher, severing their prior relationship at the same time.

Think about it…someone Elgindy (possibly reading this from his prison cell) considered excessively mercenary. Wow.

A more detailed analysis of Schneider’s posting patterns will soon follow, but here’s a quick summary of the companies he has most ferociously attacked in recent years:

• Xybernaut
• Matrixx Initiatives
• Overstock.com
• Novastar Financial
• Escala Group
• Cenuco
• Hythiam
• Lucent Technologies
• iMERGENT

What do each of these companies have in common? They’re all targets of the illegal market manipulation technique known as strategic failure to deliver, as manifest by their presence on the so-called Reg SHO Securities Threshold List, indicating chronic failed trades of a company’s stock.

To better understand that issue, watch this presentation.

Before reading what follows, it’s important to know that Yahoo! message board aliases ymh_ymh_ymh, ursa_of_245_park_avenue, ursa_383_madison_avenue, and ursa_minor_245 all belong to Yolanda Holtzee. You can read more on these relationships here.

According to a Wall Street Journal story dated April 18, 2006 (reprinted here, one week later):

In 1998, hoping to make more cash, [Holtzee] began managing money, she says, for a handful of wealthy individuals. She says she stopped taking in new investors in 2000 and won’t disclose her firm’s assets under management or its performance.

Ms. Holtzee refers to her company, Alcap LLC, as an “investment club” and says she employs two traders in Connecticut and a compliance officer.

Holtzee’s first apparent mention of the fund appears to come in January of 2002.

11-Jan-02

Yolanda, as ursa_of_245_park_avenue, first mentions the fund, which she called ALCAP, LLP. Here she explains what that name means.

26-Jan-02

Two weeks later, ursa_of_245_park_avenue hints as to her fund’s performance

Heebner’s returns are not as good as mine by any stretch of the imagination

In a subsequent post, Holtzee continues:

It’s not a hedge fund, per se. It’s a private investment partnership called ALCAP, LLP aka Casino Ursa.

30-Jan-02

Here Yolanda, as ymh_ymh_ymh, offers insights into the holdings of “Casino Ursa aka ALCAP,” also noting:

Ursa does a great job making Marc and his boys much Richer.

14-May-02

Here ymh_ymh_ymh discloses the cost of a new trading account at Casino Ursa (ALCAP, LLP)…or is she promoting trading accounts at Bear Stearns?

…Who’s ready to dump SCH, ET, and AMTD and trade up to my boys and girls at BSC? 500K minimum on a trading account, kids. Casino Ursa ain’t cheap but it’s worth the price.

24-May-02

Following much confusion by her fellow posters over several seemingly contradictory statements by Holtzee about the nature of ALCAP, ymh_ymh_ymh offers this explanation:

It’s a trust fund, LLP type and it is known as the holding company, ALCAP. No listing for it. Small and private.

9-Jun-02

Yet two weeks later, Yolanda, as ursa_383_madison_avenue, goes out of her way to suggest that she actually works for Bear Stearns.

…Yes, my firm, took many dogs public and our clients got those shares at offer price. Our clients sold those dogs in late 1999/2000 for the most part and we shorted the living hell out of them and made some very nice money taking them downhill skiing. Our clients are not naive. Our brokers are the world’s best. My firm’s trading within 10% of an all time high. My firm is the might Bear Stearns (BSC:NYSE)…Our clients are happy. Our brokers are happy. Our price chart is BEAUTIFUL. We are the mighty Bear Stearns (BSC: NYSE). BSC stands for Breakfast of Super Champions. For more on my firm, please view my YHOO profile.

ursa_383_madison_avenue’s user profile, static since May 15, 2002, lists as her profession “Hedge Fund Manager.”

14-Nov-02

Five months later, ymh_ymh_ymh says she’s back in the hedge fund business.

I co-manage a hedge fund called ALCAP. We’re offshore, not registered.

At this point, it’s unclear whether Holtzee’s ALCAP is a hedge fund, a trust fund, or an investment club, and why Bear Stearns continues entering the picture.

But much more interesting is the question of what role billionaire Marc Rich plays in this fund.

Recall the above comment from January 30, 2002, in which Holtzee commented: “Ursa does a great job making Marc and his boys much Richer.”

Now compare that comment with the remnants of a comment made by Yolanda as ursa_minor_245 on a since-deleted thread, dated August 28, 2000, and captured by another poster here a few months later.

by: ursa_minor_245

(F/Zug, Switzerland)

8/28/00 3:16 pm

Msg: 9274 of 11531

…For the record, and the 5th time at least: I don’t work for BSC and I have never worked for BSC. I don’t want to work for BSC or ANY hype house. They don’t pay enough. I serve Marc Rich, the best trader that ever lived, Baar none. You make as much money as you want serving him. No rules…just go for it.

Subsequent comments by Holtzee make it clear that she is in fact referring to fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, who at that point had yet to be pardoned by President Clinton.

If true, this admission of directly engaging in commerce with an expatriate fugitive whose indictment on tax fraud in 1983 was called the “biggest in history” is shocking.

Furthermore, the possibility that the shadowy ALCAP/Casino Ursa/Bear Cub Capital Management, which, depending on when you ask the question, is either a trust or a hedge fund or an investment club organized as an LLC or LLP, that either is or is not affiliated with Bear Stearns, might have served as one of Marc Rich’s notoriously numerous offshore money laundering or campaign finance law-skirting vehicles should be investigated.

Third Point, LLC is a hedge fund run by Daniel Loeb, also known on stock message boards as “Mr. Pink.”

Michelle McDonough (formerly Michelle Sarian), is a convicted felon who has spent one year in prison for securities fraud. Today, as before going to prison, McDonough has a company called Magic Consulting.

Floyd Schneider is a prolific message board poster, whose many pseudonyms can typically be found repeating the same drumbeat of fraud and executive incompetence. Schneider’s posts frequently encourage shareholders to file SEC complaints and/or join shareholder lawsuits.

Yolanda Holtzee is also a prolific message board poster, most notably as Ms. Mint Green, who holds herself out at a close associate of Daniel Loeb/Mr. Pink. Holtzee is also frequently found to be encouraging shareholders to complain to the SEC and participate in shareholder lawsuits.

Roddy Boyd is a reporter for the New York Post and frequent online supporter and offline apologist of Floyd Schneider and Yolanda Holtzee.

AntiSocialMedia.net has learned that Third Point has, on multiple occasions, engaged Michelle McDonough to generate support for SEC investigations and/or class action lawsuits brought by shareholders against companies in which Third Point has substantial short interests. (Daniel Loeb refused to comment on the nature of his relationship with Michelle McDonough.)

McDonough, in turn, frequently engages Floyd Schneider and Yolanda Holtzee (among others) to foment and feign support for such shareholder actions on stock message boards. (McDonough refused to comment on the nature of her relationship with Schneider and Holtzee.)

Roddy Boyd has been asked on two occasions to comment on his relationship with McDonough. The resulting exchanges, via email with Judd Bagley, proceeded as follows:

Judd Bagley: “…What do you know about a woman named Michelle McDonough?”

Roddy Boyd: “re Michelle M: nothing. Should I? google has about 1mm entries for that name.”

Judd Bagley: “She used to go by the name Michelle Sarian. Today she runs “Magic Consulting.” I think she did a year in prison back in 2001.”

Roddy Boyd: “re sarian or mcdonough…youre (sic) concern, not mine.”

The second, more recent, exchange proceeded as follows:

Judd Bagley: “While I’ve got you…you recently denied knowing Michelle McDonough (formerly Sarian). Is that still your position?”

Roddy Boyd: “sorry judd, im (sic) not talking to you about anything else, period. if youre (sic) not comfortable with me asking the questions-fine. but im (sic) not anwering (sic) yours.”

That’s right…Roddy Boyd, a reporter, essentially twice gave me a reply of “no comment” when asked about any relationship he may have with Michelle McDonough.

Of course that response falls right in line with Daniel Loeb, Michelle McDonough and Yolanda Holtzee — who also ignored my requests for comment.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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) th