Dear MeDroogies: The article is not true. Here, read this:
Raging Bull Chat Room Devotees
Get Dose of 'Whopper'
By Robert Kowalski
Staff Reporter
11/9/00 3:12 PM ET
If anyone needed further proof that Internet bulletin
boards attract fools like winged vermin to a Shell
No-Pest Strip, Steve Tracy offered it last week when
he publicly "confessed" online that he was being paid
to bash stocks.
In the week that followed, lots of the gullible folk still
apparently didn't realize just how badly they were
being had. So badly that Tracy, the originator of the
little hoax, was sheepishly wondering if his prank had
spiraled out of control.
"In my view, this thing has gotten totally ridiculous," he
wrote in an email interview. "While at first I was
pleased at the reception it received, I am quite
dismayed that so many people would believe what I
had thought to be an obvious joke."
The fun began last Wednesday when Tracy, who goes
by the Internet alias firebird_1965, posted a tome
entitled, "Confessions of a Paid Basher", on Raging
Bull.
Blastoff
Tracy posted the purported mea culpa with
considerable fanfare, including a
message-by-message countdown to its launch.
In the missive, he came clean in gushing prose about
what many of the conspiratorial types have suspected
for months about the Internet message boards: He
claimed he was being paid to bash stocks as part of
an orchestrated effort to drive their prices down. He
said he worked for a boiler room operation called
Franklin Andrews Kramer & Edelstein in Stamford,
Conn.
He said he was ashamed and wanted to be able to
look himself in the mirror again. "I'm too broken up to
continue. I hope this confession can make up for my
sordid deeds," he wrote.
OK, that kind of talk usually brings a skeptical smirk to
any reporter's face. This is Raging Bull, after all, not
the Little Sisters of the Poor. And there were other
red flags fluttering around this tale.
There is no listing for Franklin Andrews in the
Stamford phone directory. No sign of it in standard
corporate records databases either. One clever
observer later noticed a pattern in the first initials of
each name in the firm when linked together: F-A-K-E.
"Come on, that's as obvious and silly as those
acronyms they used in the old 1960s spy movies,"
Tracy said.
There was also a nearly identical posting of a
so-called paid basher confession on another message
board site with a different name for the supposed
boiler room. Then there was the clincher. At the bottom
of Tracy's "confession," well past the signature (for
anyone who bothered to continue scrolling), read this
innocuous line: "And if you believe this -- lol."
In Internet posting lingo, "lol" is short for "laughing out
loud."
Bingo.
But that's the part no one picked up initially when they
electronically copied the confession and began
posting it all over other message board sites under
headings for at least a dozen different stocks.
Those included boards for Urbana (URBA:OTC BB -
news), Sun Microsystems (SUNW:Nasdaq - news),
Cyber-Care (CYBR:Nasdaq - news) and WaveRider
Communications (WAVC:Nasdaq - news).
"It put 'bashers' in a whole new light for me" one
person wrote in a posting on Raging Bull.
Tracy claims on his Raging Bull profile to be a 35-year
old Texas marketing consultant with an MBA who likes
"fast cars, faster women." But we know how much to
believe about what he says online.
Still, in an email interview, he said: "I would ask that it
be made clear ... that I am not a paid basher."
"The truly sad thing is that after learning it was a put
on, some of these people still want to believe it was
part of some grand conspiracy," he said. "My
suggestion to these people is: Don't go to Burger
King for a while -- you've already had your share of
Whoppers!"
thestreet.com
Lynn |
