I don't get a chance to post much anymore, but thought I'd keep sending in the trash on TALK. Check out this one, Borislow is sending goons after a Street.com reporter.
Phil
Commentary Features: Chasing Down Bad Publicity
By Alex Berenson
Senior Writer
11/13/98 6:30 PM ET
The events recounted in this story began one day after TSC ran a story that was sharply critical of Tel-Save Holdings (TALK:Nasdaq) and WorldxChange.
TSC has been unable to find evidence linking Tel-Save or WorldxChange to the incidents retold below. While a person familiar with what happened says that the people who followed me were hired "because of a story" I wrote, I've written a lot of stories, and Borislow isn't the only person with an interest in Tel-Save's success. All kinds of people have vested interests in Tel-Save, from investors to financiers to traders.
Borislow at first refused to discuss this story on the record. Later, he denied any involvement in the events recounted here. WorldxChange, a privately held company, also denies involvement.
I'm frustrated that I haven't been able to nail down the person or company responsible for what happened to me. Still, this story is worth telling. It offers a first-hand glimpse at the lengths that companies and individuals may go to when trying to protect themselves from publicity they perceive as hostile.
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It's Sunday, Aug. 23, 6:30 a.m. I'm slumped in the back of a cab, dozing as the car rolls through New York's Lower East Side, on the way to the airport for the start of a business trip to San Francisco.
I'm glad to be getting out of town. Two days before, something strange happened. A bruiser calling himself Sasha came to the TSC office trying to get a look at me. Then he waited outside our building for an hour. Eventually, I came downstairs with some co-workers and asked him what he was doing and why he'd signed in to our building under another name.
I didn't get much of an answer. "I'm sorry if I rattled you," he said as I walked away.
That rattled me.
I don't know who sent Sasha, though I have a couple ideas. In any case the threat, if that's what it was, has faded since then. And I remind myself that I'm a business reporter. Despite what Hollywood likes to think, reporters rarely find themselves in danger, at least not in the United States.
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We stop at a red light. "Umm, I don't mean to be paranoid," says the cab's driver, Marty Friedman. "But I think someone's following us."
I squirm in the seat, looking back. A black Dodge Caravan sits behind us, two men in its front seats. "That van," Friedman says. "It was parked about 100 feet from your apartment. When I left, they followed us. They jumped a light to stay with us. I'm going to stay in the center lane here, then make a left on Delancey. See if they turn."
We do. They follow. We head east toward the Williamsburg Bridge, which connects Manhattan and Brooklyn. The Caravan pulls over as we stop at a light. It pulls out again when the light turns.
Maybe these people are amateurs, or maybe they don't care if we see them. Either way, I'm scared.
"I can try to lose them, if you want," Marty says.
I nod. We scramble over the bridge and accelerate onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Caravan shrinking behind us. A couple of miles later, we turn onto another highway. I can't see the Caravan anywhere. "I think we lost 'em," Marty says. "They'd have to be going 85, 90 miles an hour to keep up with us."
Five minutes later, the van is behind us again. I grab my cell phone and dial 911.
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The chase continues down the Van Wyck Expressway in Queens. With the minivan behind us, I hunch in the back seat of the cab, pleading on my cell phone for a police car to pull us and our pursuers over. But the police dispatcher says she can't send help because she didn't know where we were. When I try to explain, she tells me to have the driver pull over and wait for help.
"I don't want to pull over," I say. "I'm being chased. Don't you understand?"
Apparently not. After begging her for help for 10 frustrating minutes, I give up, my fear mounting as the van stays on our tail. The police are nowhere to be found.
Avoiding the airport, we flee west on the Belt Parkway, back toward Manhattan. A few miles later, Marty pulls off the highway and runs through a tricky series of turns in a southern Queens neighborhood filled with cul-de-sacs.
We lose the van. I haven't seen it since.
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I postponed my flight that morning and headed for a police precinct, where the New York Police Department eventually deigned to accept a harassment complaint. The police phoned a TSC editor. That was apparently the end of their investigation -- we've heard nothing in the two months since.
But thanks to a private investigator hired by TSC, we do know a few things about my pursuers. The minivan was registered to Kevin Walsh, a New York City police sergeant who lives on Long Island. At the time of the chase, Walsh worked part-time for Corplex, a private investigative agency based in New York, according to our TSC investigator. A second, independent source confirms that Corplex and Walsh were hired to trail me because of a story I'd written. Corplex is owned by Kroll Associates, maybe the world's best-known corporate security firm.
So why was Corplex hired, and who hired it? Corplex executives wouldn't return repeated calls for comment. Jules Kroll, the founder of Kroll Associates, discussed the case on background for more than an hour, but stopped talking after I refused to promise to keep his firm's name out of this story. He hasn't returned calls since. Walsh has also never returned repeated phone calls.
Bill O'Gara, the president of Kroll-O'Gara (KROG:Nasdaq), which owns Kroll, says his company is almost always hired by companies, not individuals. "On the investigation side, we tend to stay more toward corporate matters," he said. When I told him what had happened to me and asked why Kroll might be involved, O'Gara said, "I'm at loss as to give the reasoning as to what the motivation is. ... We're just not in the practice of harassing."
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Despite months of investigating, I have been unable to find out who hired Kroll. I personally believe that a person with an interest in Tel-Save was most likely responsible. TSC has published stories about Tel-Save that have become the subject of vitriolic Internet chat-board postings, and Tel-Save Chairman Daniel Borislow has made a threat to put TSC out of business in response to a story published in TSC. The tailing and investigations began the day after a Tel-Save story that examined a merger the company was contemplating. Following the story, the merger was abandoned.
But I have no evidence to support that theory. When I asked Borislow point-blank if he'd hired Kroll to follow me, he first refused to answer on the record. In a follow-up interview two weeks later, he denied that Tel-Save was investigating me and said he didn't know whether WorldxChange was.
"You're a likely target," he added.
WorldxChange CEO Roger Abbott also denied any attempt to investigate me. "We've never done that," he said. "It wasn't us, and I have no knowledge of anybody doing it."
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I try to keep what happened two months ago in perspective. No overt threats were made. And, as journalists go, U.S. reporters are a privileged class. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists doesn't even bother to track problems related to American reporters, so rare are the threats they face.
But somebody was sending a clear message: We know where you work. We know where you live.
And it scared me. |
