What seems to bother critics of AntiSocialMedia.net more than anything else is their inability to disprove the things written here.

That’s because AntiSocialMedia.net deals in facts. Period.

Often, having made my case, I’ll take the additional step of drawing conclusions based on the facts. It’s never easy leaving the comfort of what I know to be true for what I suspect is true — particularly when reputations are involved. Yet, with a single (quickly rectified) exception, every conclusion extrapolated here has proven accurate.

And, in at least one case, my conclusions have proven much more accurate than even I could have anticipated.
To learn more about that case, let us return to June of 2007.

At that time, I concluded that convicted stock manipulator Sam Antar and securities class action litigator Howard Sirota were working in concert with convicted stock manipulator Barry Minkow’s Fraud Discovery Institute (FDI) to manipulate the share price of USANA, a public company.

You can review my reasoning (which, I urge you to keep in mind, Sam Antar characterized as being “filled with deception, innuendo, deflection, insensitivity, and arrogance”) here.

Many things have happened since the post was published, most notably the deposition of Minkow, whom USANA is suing for reasons that I expect will soon appear obvious. You may access the deposition transcript, in two parts, here and here.

In his deposition, Minkow confirms that to say he and Sam Antar were “doing business together” was the understatement of the fiscal year.

Minkow states, under oath, the following:
At some point in the past two or three years, Sam Antar came to be a “spiritual advisor” to Minkow. But unlike a traditional spiritual advisor, Antar didn’t ask for money…he was handing it out.

According to Minkow, in mid-2006, Antar sent him, unsolicited and with no strings attached: $100,000. This was Antar’s way of saying: “Thank you…you’ve been an example for me that you can come back from failure.”

Shortly thereafter, and by pure coincidence, Minkow decided to use Antar’s money to finance FDI’s attack on USANA, which was published and delivered to the SEC on February 20, 2007 (precisely the same day as Minkow’s second book was published), but not before Minkow established a short position in USANA stock, as well as investing in put options (both of which gain value as a stock loses value).

Minkow says that in total, Antar’s support for FDI has exceeded $250,000.

Additionally, Minkow disclosed two payments totaling $40,000 by hedge fund manager (and frequent Herb Greenberg advisor) Whitney Tilson, and $10,000 by Anthony Bruan, owner of Cactus Capital.

Remember Howard Sirota? Bruan is a long-time Sirota law client, dating back to some high-profile scrapes with the securities laws in 2001.

Sam Antar is also a long-time client of Howard Sirota’s law practice.

For those of you keeping score at home, that means at least $260,000 – nearly 90% – of the disclosed $300,000 used to finance FDI’s attack on USANA, came from associates of Howard Sirota, who makes a living leading shareholder lawsuits against public companies, à la Milberg Weiss.

Here’s where things get strange…
Consulting public records, I discovered that on February 27, 2007 (seven days after FDI’s USANA report was released), the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance issued a warrant for unpaid taxes against Sam E. Antar, in the amount of $473.15.

A bankruptcy attorney I consulted with on this issue cautioned that from time to time these warrants are filed erroneously. Hoping to rule out that possibility, I conducted a deeper search and discovered that unpaid taxes are nothing new to Sam Antar. Indeed, between 1987 and 2007, Antar amassed over $333,000 in tax liens, warrants and judgments on the city, state and federal levels, in addition to just under $60,000 in judgments and liens by private creditors in 1992 and 1993.

None of these debts was discharged by Antar’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing in 1998.

My point being, Sam’s history suggests this most recent – and nearly one year later, unsatisfied – tax warrant was not the result of an error.

And yet, from Minkow’s deposition, we’re supposed to believe that someone who can’t pay a $500 tax bill is in a position to give Minkow gifts totaling at least $250,000 – motivated by nothing more than the spirit of fraud fighting?

As noted in my earlier post on this topic, Howard Sirota was caught bashing (though in an unusually civil manner, to his credit) USANA stock on Yahoo Finance under the screen name StanleySargoy. In his first such post, dated April 14, 2007, Sirota declares (and Minkow’s deposition later confirms) that Sirota was shorting USANA stock, in addition to being long USANA put options.

Interestingly, five trading days later, USANA appeared on the Reg SHO Threshold Securities list for the first time.

Whether or not Sirota’s short position was a legitimate one, this post to Yahoo Finance by StanleySargoy in 2003 shows Sirota’s clear understanding of the relationship between public perception of a company and its share price, and of the value of using the media and other venues to spread negative information specifically for the purpose of lowering share price.

Based on these facts, I am led to conclude:

1. Sam Antar’s $250,000 “gift” wasn’t a gift, but the cost of a commissioned, negative report on USANA, intended to adversely impact USANA’s share price.
2. The money Antar gave Minkow wasn’t Antar’s at all. I suspect it belonged to someone else using Antar as an intermediary.
3. In addition to shorting USANA, Sirota likely intended to lead one of the (several) class action suits brought against the company in the months following release of Minkow’s report. That he did not do so just might be a consequence of his having been identified as StanleySargoy in this blog.
4. Finally, but likely most importantly, is my belief that this is a clear case of illegal stock manipulation.

If this sounds implausible, please remember that it is precisely the sort of activity Sirota’s counterparts at the law firm of Milberg Weiss are accused of engaging in. To learn more, you may either read this 105 page indictment of Milberg Weiss, or (as I would recommend) invest a few minutes watching an excellent presentation explaining how this sort of thing is happening on a broader scale than you could possibly imagine.

As any engineer will attest, the key to an enduring structure is a solid foundation. Builders who choose not to worry about foundation issues will deliver a product that’s worthless at best, and a dangerous liability at worst.

Likewise, arguments crafted without a foundation amount to something ranging from worthless to dangerous.

In both cases, the motives of those responsible must be questioned.

Observers of one Yahoo stock message board were recently treated to the equivalent of a foundation-free high-rise project. It started with a post by New York attorney Howard Sirota, who demanded:

No More Anti-Semitism on this Board!
I just did a search for “Jew” on this Message Board.
There are 428 posts containing the word “Jew.”
That means that this board is infested with anti-semites, which is intolerable.

Sirota went on to claim that some admittedly inappropriate comments made to this blog (which were immediately removed once brought to my attention) were symptomatic of a further anti-Semitic infestation.

In his blog, Gary Weiss reflected on Sirota’s assessment saying:

The subject is a disturbing one — the tendency of the Baloney Brigade anti-short-selling lunatics to use anti-Semitic stereotypes and imagery.

And with that, a set of flimsy and transparent walls were hastily erected.

Sam Antar also chimed in, insisting that the unnoticed words of one commenter somehow equate to the endorsement of the board of directors of my employer.

“The Audit Committee…has a simple choice: wheather (sic) they choose to be associated with such vile ugliness from their inaction in fully enforcing the company’s Code of Business Conduct and Ethics or to take swift action to prevent further vile acts…”

And with that, a particularly leaky and incompetent roof was put in dropped in place and the mass was dubbed a house.

Looking at their work, Gary Weiss and Sam Antar would have the world believe that they’re responsible for creating something great.

But one thing is absent: a foundation, which Howard Sirota neglected to build, rendering the contributions of both Weiss and Antar worthless.

Let’s start with Weiss, who built his claim of anti-Semitism on the part of opponents of illegal market manipulation entirely upon Sirota’s assertion that one company’s stock message board was infested with anti-Semites. This claim, in turn, was based upon Sirota’s observation that the word “Jew” appeared in 428 of the tens of thousands of messages posted there over more than five years.

For the sake of argument, and in deference to Mr. Sirota, who is Jewish and undoubtedly better at recognizing anti-Semitism than a non-Jew, let us assume that this is a reliable metric of a message board’s level of bigotry.

Weiss takes the argument one step further and announces that in addition to being quantitative, this metric is also qualitative, in that from it, blameworthiness can also be assigned. Specifically, Weiss feels the blame for 428 tainted message board posts fall squarely at the feet of all opponents of illegal naked short selling.

Let’s take a closer look at the numbers to gauge the integrity of this line of reasoning.

A search for posts including the word “Jew,” conducted two days after Sirota’s, returned 442 such messages. The authors of these posts were then divided up based on their attitude toward illegal naked shorting (with a third category comprised of those who, like Mr. Sirota, have made no statements on the topic).

The result is very instructive.

• Those in favor of illegal naked short selling authored 323 messages, or 73% of the total.
• Those most likely to be opposed to illegal naked short selling authored 96 messages, or 22% of the total.
• Those without a discernible position on the issue of illegal naked short selling authored 23, or 5% of the total.

But wait, there’s more!

Among those authors in favor of illegal naked short selling, one stands out far above the rest: Lamborghini751, who personally authored 131 messages deemed anti-Semitic by Howard Sirota.

That’s one-third of all of them.

The best part: Lamborghini751 is Gary Weiss (as demonstrated here).

In other words, if Sirota’s method of assessing message board bigotry is accurate, the biggest culprit is Gary Weiss himself, thereby invalidating everything Weiss has written on the topic, whether as himself, as Lamborghini751, or as the blogger Mediacrity.

On the other hand, if Sirota’s method is not accurate, then the entire basis for Weiss’s claim of anti-Semitism being endemic to opponents of naked shorting is flawed, again invalidating everything Weiss has written on the topic.

Now let’s look at Sam Antar.

What Sammy apparently forgot to tell Sirota (a longtime Antar family friend) is that thanks to the Dissembler Sorting Algorithm, it’s possible to determine when multiple Yahoo message board aliases are tied to the same account. In the case of Mr. Sirota, it was quickly discovered that he is behind not only the username hsirota, but also StanleySargoy.

Sirota created StanleySargoy in 1999 and used the account very occasionally to either promote or demote companies primarily in the pharma and biotech space, until 2005.

Then in April of this year, StanleySargoy was called out of retirement and into active combat duty. The target: Usana, a company under heavy short seller attack by convicted felon Barry Minkow and his so-called Fraud Discovery Institute, which just days before had issued an internally authored study accusing Usana of serious fraud.

Oh yeah…Minkow is shorting Usana.

StanleySargoy (who says he hails from San Francisco) has since become one of the more active and negative posters to Yahoo’s Usana message board.

What interest would Sirota have in Usana?

You may recall a March column by Herb Greenberg entitled What Two Crooks Told me Over Lunch, in which Greenberg details his no-reason-given meal with Sam Antar and Barry Minkow.

We can surmise that Antar and Minkow do business together.

Thanks to the actions of StanleySargoy, it appears Sirota and Minkow are doing business together.

By the transitive property, a little common sense, and some educated observation, it now appears Sirota and Antar are also doing business together.

Finally, let’s take a quick look at Howard Sirota.

Sirota’s first demand that certain comments be removed from this site was sent early Friday, June 8. The offending comments were posted June 7. Server logs confirm that, prior to their removal, only Sam Antar (whose IP address is very well known) saw all three.

In that time, no other visitor managed to see more than any one of the offending comments. Thus, assuming he’s even been to AntiSocialMedia.net, Howard Sirota’s complaint — which he likely didn’t write — dealt mostly, if not entirely, with content he likely never saw.

You might want to stand clear, Howard…with no foundation, this flimsy house that Gary and Sam built is in the process of coming down just like all the others.