thestreet.com
The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week
By George Mannes
Senior Writer
05/24/2002 07:13 AM EDT
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3. Stock in the Middle
Ready for another of our occasional insights into business reporting?
Well, strap yourself down. This one's a doozy.
Sometimes, we fear, people don't tell reporters the truth.
Yes, afraid so. And we'll go even further out on a limb here: Sometimes, it appears to us, felons don't tell reporters the truth.
Yes, yes, all too hard to believe. But true, we fear.
How did we get so cynical? Well, we read with horror this week how the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn charged one Amr I. Elgindy with all sorts of bad stuff: racketeering, insider trading, market manipulation, extortion and obstruction of justice. Stuff like that.
TheStreet.com readers with long memories will recall that back in the heady days of message boards and daytrading, this gentleman, known by his nom de net Anthony@Pacific, was a regular folk hero for the way he ripped into shares of small-cap companies.
Until he went to jail, that is. As we reported back in 2000, Elgindy went up the river in 2000 after pleading guilty to felony mail fraud. But that had nothing to do with the stock market, and it happened years before this Internet thing, he told TSC. He was a changed man.
We supposed that means he's not the kind of guy who, as the indictment accuses, would conspire with two rogue FBI agents over the past two years to dig up confidential information about companies he was selling short, and to spy on a federal grand jury investigation into Elgindy himself. Defendants, after all, are innocent until they're proven or plead guilty. TSC was unable to reach Elgindy for comment earlier this week.
So maybe what we ought to do is forward to prosecutors what he told us on his way to the pokey in 2000. He could keep an eye on "scumbags" in the market, he told us, "because I used to be a scumbag."
He added, "I'm just a young guy trying to earn an honest living."
Try, try again.
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KJC |
