Multivision's Nazerali links Deep Capture, Overstock
2015-04-15 20:36 ET - Street Wire
by Stockwatch Business Reporter
Vancouver stock promoter Aly Nazerali, the plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit against the Deep Capture website, testified in court this morning that Overstock.com Inc., an on-line retailer and a defendant in the suit, "maximized" Deep Capture's ability to have its contents cross-posted around the Internet. These contents included 21 chapters of allegedly defamatory statements about Mr. Nazerali that appeared on the Deep Capture website in 2011.
The chief executive officer of Overstock is Patrick Byrne, who publishes the Deep Capture website and is another defendant in Mr. Nazerali's lawsuit. A further defendant is Mark Mitchell, who wrote the allegedly defamatory chapters. Mr. Nazerali's lawsuit complains that the chapters falsely accuse him of being a drug dealer, terrorist, fraudster and more.
On the witness stand, Mr. Nazerali answered questions from his lawyer, Dan Burnett, who found several ways to reintroduce some of Deep Capture's more colourful statements, most of which the court had already heard. For example, Mr. Nazerali testified about a phone call that he made to Mr. Mitchell on Sept. 6, 2011. Mr. Burnett read passages from Mr. Nazerali's transcript of the call. According to the transcript, Mr. Nazerali denied Mr. Mitchell's claims that (among other things) Mr. Nazerali had been "running scams" with Saudi intelligence officials, had attended secret Costa Rican meetings about market manipulation, and was once able to "patch things up" between the Mafia and notorious Canadian Irving Kott. Mr. Nazerali had denied these allegations and more earlier in the trial.
Mr. Burnett then began quoting statements that the defendants had made in an amended response to Mr. Nazerali's lawsuit. Some of the statements were similar to those made on the Deep Capture website, giving Mr. Nazerali the opportunity to air his denials again. Others were new. For example, the amended response claimed that Peter Brown, then chairman of Canaccord Capital, helped Mr. Nazerali avoid legal liability for a "pump-and-dump" scam involving Imagis Technologies. (Mr. Nazerali testified at length about Imagis on Tuesday.) The amended response said Mr. Brown told investigating regulators that he had forced Mr. Nazerali to sell Imagis stock to repay a debt. Mr. Nazerali denied ever being in a borrowing position with Mr. Brown or Canaccord. He told the court emphatically, "To say that Mr. Brown is a liar ... and that he conspired with me ... is a crock of the proverbial you-know-what."
Web proliferation
In response to questions from Mr. Burnett , Mr. Nazerali testified that on Oct. 19, 2011, he was granted an injunction that temporarily shut down the Deep Capture website. Yet this did not prevent Internet users from reading the chapters, he stated, as he learned by conducting searches for his name (using the spellings Altaf Nazerali, Aly Nazerali and Ali Nazerali). He said he found cross-postings of Deep Capture material on many websites.
Based on print-outs which Mr. Nazerali said he created in the fall of 2011, and which Mr. Burnett produced for the court, Deep Capture material on Mr. Nazerali found its way to Yahoo Finance, Forex News, chat websites such Investor Village and Raging Bull, and more. Some of the on-line posts had come from the defendants themselves, said Mr. Nazerali. He testified that an Investor Village post on Oct. 23, 2011 (four days after the injunction), featured Mr. Byrne himself writing: "It looks like Ali Nazerali wants to go a few rounds. Happy to oblige." A Yahoo Finance post of Nov. 17, 2011, was also seemingly by Mr. Byrne and stated, "All goombas should understand that the day that anything untoward occurs is the day that The Collected Works of Mark Mitchell 2008-2011 appears in the in-boxes of 41.7 million people."
Mr. Nazerali testified that even though there was an injunction in place on Deep Capture, he could see "all these cross-postings appear on various other websites." He said the on-line postings were "essentially reproducing the allegations" made by Deep Chapter, and some of them included "taunts," "threats," and the implication that Mr. Nazerali might do something "untoward" to Mr. Mitchell. That last statement was "a very direct threat to me" from Mr. Byrne, said Mr. Nazerali.
Later during the proceedings, Mr. Burnett asked Mr. Nazerali if he had ever spoken directly to Mr. Byrne. Mr. Nazerali testified that the two had talked briefly on March 26, 2015, during Mr. Byrne's deposition. Mr. Nazerali recalled that he himself had not said much, but that Mr. Byrne had said to him: "I know your kind. You're not the kind to do your dirty work yourself. You employ other people to do your dirty work. I hate that kind of people."
Overstock
Mr. Nazerali attributed the on-line proliferation of the Deep Capture material in part to Overstock, which he said was Deep Capture's owner. As an on-line retailer, Overstock would be adept at turning Web results to its best advantage, said Mr. Nazerali, who for his part admitted to "limited knowledge" of the Internet. He stated, "It's quite clear to me ... that they [Overstock] have maximized in their presentation of the site [Deep Capture] the ability of the site to be picked up by search engine spiders."
Mr. Burnett asked Mr. Nazerali if he had searched for himself on-line this week. Mr. Nazerali said he had, adding that references to Deep Capture were among the top 10 results provided by four different search engines.
In response to further questions from Mr. Burnett, Mr. Nazerali testified that he hired PR consultants and a "search engine optimization" (SEO) company to try to clean up his name on-line. Mr. Burnett asked how much the SEO costs. The lawyer for most of the defendants, libel specialist Roger McConchie, objected to the question, but the judge allowed it. Mr. Nazerali testified that from February, 2012, to November, 2014, he paid the SEO a retainer of $1,500 (U.S.) a month. The monthly amount was then renegotiated to $900 (U.S.).
Mr. McConchie represents all the defendants except for Overstock, which is represented by Vancouver lawyer Stephen Schachter of Nathanson, Schachter & Thompson LLP. |
