Monday, September 17, 2007

Alice in Bagleyland



The O-Smear blog has an extraordinary post that is must-reading for anyone following the Overstock.com slo-mo train wreck. It describes how Judd Bagley dolled himself up and posed as a woman to harass a Wikipedia administrator.

It is the series of twenty -- yes, twenty -- harassing, threatening emails that Bagley, hired as Overstock.com's paid stalker a month later, sent a Wikipedia administratorm late in July 2006. The most menacing one was sent after Bagley came on the Overstock payroll.


It appears that this "transvestite harassment campaign" was crucial in landing a key to the Overstock executive washroom for Bagley. (It is a unisex facility, I hope.) The harassment obviously charmed the pants off Overstock's creepy CEO, Patrick Byrne. He clearly was fully aware of it, as indicated by a public post just a few days later. O-Smear observes:

To gain trust (and add creepiness), Bagley posed as a woman named "Becky Beckett". Such tactics impressed Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne so much, he hired Bagley about a month later. He was seemingly well aware of Bagley's activities as indicated in this August 7, 2006 post:
Amazingly enough, they are tied into a cabal on a certain public knowledge-sharing site as well. I know a fellow who spent a lot of time briefing an investigative journalist about it all recently. It will make a heck of a sub-plot in the movie someday."
Please click on the link and read the O-Smear post. It is a fascinating look at the fantasy lives of two very strange and dangerous characters.

Note the reference to Bagley in the italicized quote. The "journalist" is a chap who was being fed a line of swill by Bagley at the time. He interviewed myself and other people, and no article ever resulted.

One can only imagine how the Wikipedia administrator felt when exposed to this "female" stalker's sustained nuttiness. I only hope that she lives in Canada, as rumored, for it takes a particularly dim view of such harassment and has a strong cyberstalking law.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site, gary-weiss.com.

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