Patrick Byrne and Overstock.com go Nixonian with "Enemies List"

When the business you run can't make a profit, you fire auditors at a whim and the SEC just won't get off your ass, you might make some enemies. Such is the case of Overstock.com (OSTK) CEO Patrick Byrne. Byrne, however, is proactive about these types of things.

So he made himself an enemies list. From Barry Ritholtz:

Here is something weird, and a little creepy:

The freakshow that is DeepCapture.com seems to have grabbed all of the Facebook friends of anyone who has ever: a) written anything positive about short selling or 2) said anything negative about Overstock.com.

http://www.deepcapture.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/facebook-data.csv

For those of you who are unaware of what DeepCapture is, the name suggests that the short sellers have “Captured” the press. Deep Capture is a work of Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com.

For the record, I am in favor of shorting stocks, but do not favor naked shorting, which is against SEC rules.

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Here's part of a Screen Grab Ritholtz took:

You know, it never ceases to amaze me how wildly complicated and conspiratorial Byrne has managed to make a company that basically sells overstocked Clappers and Toasters. Make no mistake about it, though, Patrick Byrne will go down in history.

More from Gary Weiss, Sam Antar and the Business Insider.

UPDATE: You can find another of Judd Bagley’s videos here, as well as a call to supporters to add names to the enemies list here (”As promised in the video, researchers are encouraged to find additional links within the Facebook friend lists of the short-selling hedge funds and journalists and bloggers who love them.”)

--WKW