Overstock CEO offers $75,000 for Wall Street's soul

Taunt the Russian mafia or die trying

By Cade Metz in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Financial News, 24th June 2008 00:43 GMT

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne is now paying people to promote his epic Wall Street conspiracy theory.

At a site called Deep Capture - yes, Deep Capture - Byrne and his fellow theorists recently published a nearly 40,000-word treatise detailing his claims that Wall Street, the Wall Street press, Wikipedia, and the Russian mafia have conspired to cover up an illegal stock market manipulation scheme of unprecedented proportions. If you can find a clever way of exposing this sordid tale to the masses, the world's most entertaining CEO will pay you as much as $30,000.

"In Goethe's Faust, Faust re-translates the Bible. The opening line [of The Gospel of John] is 'In the beginning, there was the word.' But he realizes that will never do, and he changes it to 'In the beginning, there was the act.' That's what we're doing here," Byrne tells us, in that unmistakably Byrne way. "We're incentivising people to go out and inject Deep Capture out into the public discourse."

So, if you want the cash, you have to read all 40,000 words. Then you have to convince others to read them. We'll be impressed if you make it past step one.

In recent weeks, Byrne set up a brand new company that does nothing but drive his long-running crusade against a Wall Street trick known as naked short selling. This three-man outfit - also called Deep Capture - has set aside a total of $75,000 for fellow crusaders. The best PR stunt gets $30,000. The next best gets $20,000. And so on.

But before you make a play for the dough, you should know this: Byrne insists that a Russian mobster once threatened him with death if he continued to broadcast his views on naked shorting. Of course, Byrne is still alive. So you may be safe. ®

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