Alma Templeton

Criminal Past Haunts Bidz.com - Barron's

I would suggest that you consider reading the article again. You seem to have confused some of the key points, and additionally would appear to lack the ability to discern the difference between past and present tense.

1. You state that "several of [Zinberg's] partners and key staff do [have a criminal record]". Yet, nowhere in the article is a single present employee of Bidz.com named who has a criminal record. In fact, the most recent employment of anyone with a criminal record named in the article is 2003, a good 4 years before the company went public. By directly stating that current employees of the company have criminal records, you are slandering the company.

2. You state "VP Leon Kuperman insists there is nobody in the company today with a criminal record. But Kuperman also admits that the company only started investigating allegations recently after its board received an anonymous letter." However, given that all actual criminal convictions and charges are attributed to either former employees or people who were never employed by the company, one must wonder why you would expect them to have investigated in the first place. Should all public companies ask every employee for a list of co-workers at every place that they worked previously and run background checks on them too to make sure that the person never made the mistake of having social contact with someone who is less than stellar? To paraphrase Kuperman, how precisely does the fact that people who were never employed by the company in the first place warrant any change in their operational policies and procedures?

3. You state that Itkin managed an illegal strip club. In reality, Itkin's role is left unknown by the article, and the general impression that I got was that he served as a financial advisor. Furthermore, the strip club itself wasn't illegal. The liquor license issue would seem to be a zoning problem brought on by an overzealous dancer or two who didn't follow the rules. So, really, the only thing that you can tie to a present associate of Bidz is that they served as an advisor to a club nearly a decade ago where some girl stepped over the line and flashed her breasts or something. That's pretty weak.

4. I know that you're trying to get some buzz by parroting a juicy story, but you ought to be more accurate. Furthermore, I think the more juicy story is that Barron's has allegedly used Andrew Left (allegedly convicted of stock fraud), Sam Antar (convicted of the biggest IPO scam ever in the 80's) and Amr Elgindy (currently serving time for many charges, including stock fraud and selling non-existent stock) as sources.

5. Furthermore, what about the fact that former Barrons senior editor Cherly Einhorn allegedly published articles that supported the short positions of her husband hedge fund manager David Einhorn and his alleged friend Daniel Loeb? Do you think that a writer and an institution can be unbiased when they have social and financial ties to the people taking short positions?

6. If Barrons is to stand as the journal of record for dictating morality, shouldn't they be subject to scrutiny? If they are or did publish articles with the specific intent of creating collusion with short sellers in order to support their position, don't they lose their moral ground? Wouldn't one then have to doubt both the accuracy of their facts and their motivations? Given their supposedly large influence over the market, this would seem like a bigger story, and I can only wonder if less influential bloggers are too fearful to cover it.