| | | Court ruling forces conspiracy theorist Patrick M. Byrne, CEO of online retailer Overstock.com, to pay over a million dollars for the lies he published about a Vancouver businessman.
By Mata Press Service
WireService.ca Media Release (08/15/2018) - Long before US president Donald Trump made the term "fake news" an everyday expression, online retailer Patrick Byrne was peddling falsehoods to pump up his following on a website devoted to criminal financial conspiracies.
This week, Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com learned that fake news has real consequences after the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his appeal of the defamation judgment that Vancouver entrepreneur, Altaf Nazerali won against Byrne in 2016.
The decision released on Aug. 9, closed a seven-year battle by Nazerali to clear his name and Byrne now has to pay more than a million dollars for the lies he published.
"I would be very cautious about dealing with a man who does not care about the truth," said an investment analyst, who has been watching the case for the last five years.
"I recently read that a Hong Kong private equity firm is planning to invest millions of dollars in one of Byrne's companies…I don't know if they have done their due diligence," he said.
The analyst was referring to a press release put out by Byrne that claimed Hong Kong-based
GSR Capital has announced that it will invest $270 million in a blockchain-based startup of Overstock.com, called tZero.
If the Chinese private equity company seals the deal it will be one of the largest ever single investments made by a company in a blockchain startup said the release.
"Given my experience with this man, I would caution anyone who deals with him to check every word he utters," said Nazerali, who was targeted by Byrne.
The recent Supreme Court of Canada's decision was the final avenue of appeal for Byrne who was in 2016 ordered to pay Nazerali $1.2-million for destroying the reputation the Vancouver businessman in a "ruthless campaign".
That judgment by the B.C. Supreme Court - the highest such award in British Columbia history, and one of the highest in Canada - stemmed from a series of articles that appeared in 2011 on an American website DeepCapture.com.
The articles were written by Mark Mitchell and published on the website that was owned by Byrne, who was also the publisher.
They falsely portrayed Nazerali as a gangster, arms dealer, drug trafficker, financier of al-Qaida and member of the Russian and Italian Mafias.
"Mitchell, Byrne and Deep Capture LLC engaged in a calculated and ruthless campaign to inflict as much damage on Mr. Nazerali's reputation as they could achieve," B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Affleck concluded in his 102-page ruling.
"It is clear on the evidence that their intention was to conduct a vendetta in which the truth about Mr. Nazerali himself was of no consequence." Affleck slammed Mitchell and Byrne for demonstrating "an indecent and pitiless desire to wound."
Justice Affleck went on to say, "not only are the defamatory words pleaded by the plaintiff damaging to his reputation, these defendants, instead of choosing to tone down their extravagant language once they were sued, chose to pile on the abuse with a narrative of multiple allegations of serious misconduct."
For his part, Nazerali said the experience was devastating and described the defamation as "the cruelest form of torture and punishment one can possibly imagine."
The recent refusal by Canada's top court to hear Byrne's appeal has got scant coverage by the media.
Byrne has been known to be effective in discouraging critical coverage of himself and his company.
A New York Times column described Byrne as a "menace," saying "he bullies and taunts and goads the small handful of reporters who dare to write about Overstock, making it clear that there will be a price to be paid for tackling the company or its chief executive."
Gary Weiss, one of the few American journalists who has reported on the case described the Canadian court rulings as "a big victory in the fight against fake news."
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