Overstock earnings questioned by ex-con

Posted Apr 21st 2008 3:00PM by Zac Bissonnette
Filed under: Blogs, Scandals

Former Crazy Eddie CFO and sometime Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) critic Sam E. Antar has posted an item on his blog accusing that company of a "stock market manipulation scheme."

Read Overstock.com and Patrick Byrne: Anatomy of a Stock Market Manipulation Scheme – First Quarter Earnings Release here.

In the post, Antar alleges that the first quarter earnings press release issued on Friday was "intentionally timed with expiration of options to manipulate the market (i.e., as a "short squeeze") and to bury and downplay grave news of a criminal investigation in California."

Analyzing the company's numbers, Antar points out that the company's revenue from its auction business declined more than 44% year-over-year, in spite of CEO Patrick Byrne's claim as recently as January that "things look better from here" for the auction site.

Antar accuses the company of violations of SEC rule 10b-5: interesting given that the company is currently the target of an SEC investigation.

Here are a few of my past posts on the company that one securities lawyer affectionately refers to as OverSchlock.com:

Shop at Overstock, Support Cyberstalking.
Patrick Byrne, Hypocrite
Patrick Byrne Defending USXP Fraud?
More Goofy Press Releases
Byrne overpaid at $0?

Tags: Antar, OSTK, Overstock, Pat Byrne, PatByrne

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

4-22-2008 @ 6:56AM

idpatch said...

Zac, you seem to be doing well as the mouthpiece to Antar and Weiss, is there a problem coming up with something original?

4-25-2008 @ 5:00PM

shammara said...

Interesting. Overstock is a client of ours, we power their review technology, and publish their consumer written reviews on http://www.buzzillions.com