Sam E. Antar's  Instablog

To Patrick Byrne:

You have denied me personal access to the conference call and have provided arbitrary and unreasonable conditions not imposed on other participants in the call. In any case, I will be seeking access to the call to ask possible follow up questions.

You are perfectly aware that some of my questions involve complicated accounting issues and cannot reasonably be kept to 25 words or less.

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Recommended reading:

Forensic accountant, author, and blogger Tracy Coenen analyzes Overstock.com's (NASDAQ: OSTK) financial reporting violations in her blog post entitled "Conservatism is no exuse for false financial statements, Overstock.com."

In my blog, I detailed Overstock.com's improper use of "cookie jar" reserves that violate Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). As a result of my reporting, the SEC re-opened its investigation of Overstock.com.

Overstock.com, led by CEO Patrick Byrne, has already restated its financial reports twice in the last three years. Every financial report issued by the company from its inception has at least initially violated GAAP or other SEC disclosure rules. The company now faces a third restatement of its financial reports as a result of my blog's exposure of improper "cookie jar" reserves.

Posted by:

Sam E. Antar

Disclosure:

I am a convicted felon and a former CPA. As the criminal CFO of Crazy Eddie, I helped Eddie Antar and other members of his family mastermind one of the largest securities frauds uncovered during the 1980's.

I do not own Overstock.com securities short or long. My research on Overstock.com and in particular its lying CEO Patrick Byrne is a freebie for securities regulators and the public in order to help me get into heaven, though I doubt that I will ever get there anyway. I will probably end up joining corporate miscreants such as Patrick Byrne in hell.

The interview is available on newsstands or it can be downloaded from's Crain's New York Business with a trial subscription here. You can also read the article in Investment News (Crain's sister publication) here.

Here are some quotes:

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In three previous blog posts, I detailed how Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) violated Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and SEC disclosure rules by improperly deferring the recognition of an accounting error to create a cookie jar reserve to inflate future profits. On October 24, 2008, Overstock.com revealed that it underbilled fulfillment partners in periods prior to Q3 2008 because of customer refund and credit errors. The company improperly chose to recognize future recoveries from underbilling its fulfillment partners on a cash basis (non-GAAP) rather than restating previously issued financial reports to correct the material accounting error (GAAP). Note: Details of my previous blog posts here, here, and here).

More recently, I provided Overstock.com with a series of questions to answer about its accounting errors during its Q2 2009 earnings call (Details here). Rather than answer each of my questions, CEO Patrick Byrne went on a ranting diatribe as described by investigative journalist Gary Weiss in his blog (Details here).

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From: Sam E. Antar

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In my blog post linked below, I will provide evidence of what I believe is a stock market manipulation scheme involving InterOil (NYSE: IOC), John Thomas Financial, and Clarion Finanz AG.

http://whitecollarfraud.blogspot.com/2009/07/interoil-john-thomas-financial-and.html

Sam E. Antar

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