Have you seen this.......prosecutor says " no money ever made it to Mother Teresa"
I'd like to say "unbelievable" but of course it is fully believable.............
TheStreet.com - Silicon Valley
Fifteen Minutes of Fame and a Feud for Message Board Posters
Instead of trashing stocks they're shorting, two widely read message board
posters trash each other.
By Robert Kowalski
Staff Reporter
These ought to be the salad days for Steve Pluvia and Anthony Elgindy.
The two self-anointed white knights of the Internet message boards, who
purport to root out securities fraud and corporate mismanagement, are basking
in far more than the normally prescribed allotment of fame.
Elgindy (his real name) and Pluvia (an Internet alias for someone else who
clings to anonymity like a hunted man) are featured in not one, but two
books. They loom large in Scam Dogs and Mo-Mo Mamas: Inside the Wild and
Woolly World of Internet Stock Trading, a book released this week that
uncovers the misty world of message board posters and daytraders. The two
also are featured in Dumb Money: Adventures of a Day Trader, released in
April and recently excerpted in Wired magazine, which dubbed Elgindy "The Mad
Max of Wall Street."
So, are Elgindy and Pluvia celebrating their mutual fame? Hardly. In fact, in
recent days the two have launched a series of message board attacks against
each other with a ferocity they used to reserve for the stocks they were
shorting.
If just half the allegations they're now leveling at each other were true,
the two might be spending time (or in Elgindy's case, more time) behind bars.
Pluvia has posted messages questioning whether Elgindy raised money for
Kosovo refugees over the Internet message board site Silicon Investor , but
then pocketed the proceeds.
Elgindy fired back, calling Pluvia a plagiarist and saying he hoped the IRS
tracks him down for unpaid back taxes.
He also hinted at the real identity of the person behind the alias Pluvia,
which, according to court records in a pending lawsuit, is Steven Alan
Keyser. A man claiming to be Pluvia told TheStreet.com earlier this year that
he wasn't Keyser.
Elgindy's written assaults became so intense that the Silicon Investor
referees suspended him from the bulletin board for a time a week ago. SI does
that when posters resort to "personal attacks, spamming, copyright violations
and flame wars," said spokeswoman Jill Munden.
Elgindy, in the meantime, threw Pluvia off his own Web site.
All of this has provided great entertainment to some of the investors who
read the message boards to monitor stocks. "Isn't it nasty?" asked Kimberly
King, a Los Angeles interior decorator who posts messages under the Internet
alias "Feminvstr," and who has tangled with Pluvia and Elgindy on the message
boards in the past. "I'm fascinated by this whole thing."
King said Pluvia and Elgindy deserve scrutiny because, aside from being
colorful Internet personalities, their message board postings actually can
drive stock prices.
Both Elgindy and Pluvia are avowed short-sellers who profit when stocks in
which they hold short positions plummet in value. King cited as one example
of this Terayon Communication Systems ,(; (Nasdaq: TERN - news) one of the
stocks Pluvia targeted for his message board criticism.
"Pluvia and Anthony have some impact," said King, who is long Terayon. "I
think they've got this band of rabid dogs that follow them. ... The way that
these shorts post is very reckless."
And Pluvia and Elgindy are well read on the boards. In addition to Silicon
Investor, they also post on Raging Bull , Yahoo.com and Silicon Investor. On
the SI boards, which have 300,000 registered users, Pluvia and Elgindy are
among the 20 most popular posters, said Munden.
Pluvia and Elgindy are kindred spirits in the world of shorting stocks, and
both once posted on Elgindy's Web site. War erupted between them shortly
after a federal court judge last month decided Elgindy would be spending the
next four months of his life in a federal prison.
Elgindy had pleaded guilty to a felony count of mail fraud after he was
charged with receiving disability benefits from an insurance company while he
was actually working for securities firms.
Along with the prison time, the judge gave Elgindy four months of house
confinement, three years' probation and ordered him to pay a $20,000 fine.
After the sentencing, Pluvia began his campaign to discredit Elgindy on the
message boards.
The chief prosecutor in Elgindy's fraud case backs up at least part of what
Pluvia's been questioning about Elgindy's handling of some charity
contributions.
Elgindy had made an urgent plea for donations last April for the Mother
Theresa Humanitarian Organization . The money, he said, was to help refugees
of fighting in Kosovo.
But the charity story was full of holes, said David Jarvis, the assistant
U.S. attorney who prosecuted Elgindy in the fraud case in Texas. "None of
that money from the American people was ever given to the Mother Theresa fund
in Macedonia," Jarvis said. "He [;Elgindy]; was not the transformed man that
they made him out to be."
Elgindy, in an interview, said he never gave the $14,000 he collected to the
Mother Theresa organization because he was concerned it might be misspent by
the group, and because the organization didn't have a valid tax-exempt
status.
He said he returned the money to the 50 or so contributors within the past
month, and on Friday, posted an explanation of the whole matter on SI. He
also said he's spent $127,000 of his own money helping Kosovo refugees.
Elgindy has been ordered to check into a federal prison on June 11, and begin
serving his sentence. He says he's angered that someone like Pluvia is
pelting him with renewed criticism.
The person behind that alias is far from a saint himself, at least according
to Elgindy and court records.
A lawsuit filed against Pluvia last year charged the message board poster is
actually Steven Alan Keyser, a man with a list of legal difficulties that
includes a shoplifting conviction, an IRS lien for back taxes and an
outstanding arrest warrant in Las Vegas.
The suit was filed by Sabratek Corp. (;SBTKE:OTC BB), which accused Pluvia of
disparaging the company while holding a short position in its stock.
A federal court judge in Manhattan gave the company until May 15 to serve
Keyser, or drop him from the suit. The deadline came and went, and no one was
served.
Pluvia posted a jubilant message on Silicon Investor on May 16.
Sabratek's New York lawyer, Stu Jackson, said he can and will add Keyser back
to the suit when he's able to serve him. "We keep an eye out for him," he
said.
Silicon Investor's Munden said she knows what Elgindy looks like only from a
magazine photo. "I haven't met any of these people in person," she said.
But Elgindy, who says he has met the real person behind Pluvia, says it is
indeed Keyser.
In interviews, both Elgindy and the man claiming to be Pluvia have complained
that questions about their individual legal difficulties and possible
criminal backgrounds detract from the core of their message about stocks.
Elgindy, however, said there's a big difference between himself and Pluvia.
"I'm a much better person than he is, even though I have a conviction,"
Elgindy said. "I care about people."
Pluvia, in an email response to questions from TheStreet.com, said of
Elgindy: "I think his behavior is pathetic -- we're talking about money
donated for a charity." |
