I like Mackey’s haircut. I think he looks cute!
July 12, 2007
"Well if you really believe I'm John Mackey you should probably pay more attention to what I say on this board."
"I would be the ultimate Whole Foods Insider!" -- wrote Whole Foods founder John Mackey on the Yahoo Finance’s bulletin board, under the pseudonym Radoheb, just one of over 1,100 entries he's written there over the past 7 years -- pushing Whole Foods and knocking its rival Wild Oats. And stuff like:
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13 comments:
Wouldn't it be funny if Dave-TM turned out to actually be Ann?
Maybe some blogger could say they were channeling the ghost of Oliver Wendell Holmes -- and writing his blog! It's a script idea...
Other accounts of his sockpuppetry made it sound kind of creepy. This one, interestingly enough, made it sound pretty funny---not just because it quotes him saying he did it "for fun", either. Several of the posts they chose to quote sound clearly unserious. Then again, that may be hindsight on my part.
Well, the unethical (and possibly illegal) part comes from posting a detailed explanation of why Whole Foods would never be interested in buying Wild Oats, and certainly not at over $5/share, even as he was negotiating its takeover at $18/share.
This is a good time to confess to you all, that I sometimes post under the psuedonym's "Willow" and "Suzette"....
....but only when I have something truly heinous and sinister to say. Something which simply wouldn't be socially acceptable, or fit for public consumption....under my own name, of course.
And there are those time, when such depraved comments must be aired in all their grisly splendor.
But not by me. Hehehehe
Fondly, Maxine
Stupid. Very stupid. Me thinks Mr. Mackey's trouble have just begun.
Impersonation is an art, not a crime.
True, Maxine, but depending on what he said and when he said it, Mackey may have violated SEC regulations, could face civil and criminal penalties, and undoubtedly will face personal lawsuits alleging that readers lost money due to his misrepresentations. Stranger things have happened. (I doubt his lawyers are laughing, either.)
He admitted he was an insider - what's the big deal.
Oh, I don't know, DTL, any person or organization who sold shares of OATS over the course of the last seven years for less than its top value is probably talking to their attorney about filing suit for their losses (real and imagined).
As Millburg, Weiss has their own problems these days, I'm not positive but I am pretty sure we'll see a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of OATS shareholders, Whole Foods shareholders, former OATS shareholders, and a few others. A cast of 1,000's as it were. And that just marks the beginning. Over 1,100 posts to wade through.
It's no big deal to me. Don't own the stocks, never have, and have never shopped in either's stores.
For some reason, I really did think that you knew a lot about the securities industry. I guess I was mistaken.
That Mackey's behavior was irresponsible is without a doubt. Whether it was also criminal is the issue. Mackey deliberately used his anonymous attacks to hurt his competitor, and likely to drive down the value of a stock Whole Foods would try to acquire.
Will the blogosphere's defenders of transparency rush to condemn this unethical behavior by a supposedly "good guy company" with the same fervor that was directed against other larger corporations? Don't you think Wal-Mart's "flogging across America" was pretty tame by comparison?
What will blogs become when they grow up? Join the conversation at http://jon8332.typepad.com/force_for_good/2007/07/what-will-blogs.html
Jon Harmon
www.forceforgoodcom.com
I doubt his lawyers are laughing, either
I assume his lawyers bill by the hour. They are laughing all the way to the bank.
His haircut looks like a Julius Caesar.
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