Conspiracy Watch: The Wisest Guys in the Room

Did the Mafia kneecap Wall Street?

Illustration: Peter Hoey

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


the conspiracy: In the 1970s the Mafia started laundering its dirty money on Wall Street. With the help of unscrupulous hedge fund managers, the Mob gutted companies whose stock it had sold short, making a killing—the high-finance equivalent of taking out an insurance policy on a grocery store and then torching it. This “financial heist of monstrous proportions” eventually got so big that it triggered last October’s stock market collapse.

the conspiracy theorists: In 2007 Patrick Byrne, ceo of Overstock.com, launched DeepCapture.com to expose “a scandal that may make Enron look like an afternoon tea.” The site recently posted a nearly 40,000-word treatise exposing the alleged conspirators, who go beyond mafiosi to include former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, Mad Money host Jim Cramer, and Wikipedia, which has rubbed out entries that reveal details of the scheme. DeepCapture readers can support Byrne’s “investigative reporting” by shopping on Overstock. And he’s offered a whopping $75,000 to those who can “Crack the Wall Street Cover-Up.”

meanwhile, back on earth: Byrne is part of multiple lawsuits charging that naked short selling—investors selling stocks they didn’t own or intend to buy—cut into Overstock’s share price. Naked short selling didn’t affect only Overstock, and while it didn’t help the ailing economy, it probably didn’t kill it. (Regardless, the sec banned it in September. Byrne’s response: “There. Was that so hard?”) And that stuff about the Mafia whacking the world financial system? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Kookiness Rating: tin foil hattin foil hattin foil hattin foil hat (1=maybe they’re on to something, 5=break out the tinfoil hat!)

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate