In a recent post to the investigative reporting site DeepCapture, Mark Mitchell tells how that website was shut down by a court order for three months in 2011 after accusing businessman and charity owner Yank Barry of having ties to organized crime.
... a man named Altaf (Ali) Nazerali, who was an associate of Yank Barry, and who had founded a company called Imagis Technologies, the chairman of which was former FBI man Buck Revell, filed a libel lawsuit against DeepCapture and convinced a court in Canada to issue an injunction that shuttered DeepCapture for more than three months. The court in Canada issued this injunction before we even knew that Mr. Nazerali had filed a lawsuit against us, and without giving us an opportunity to defend what I had written about Mr. Nazerali and his associates.
The story gets weirder from there, with a controversy over whether Barry was the lead singer on the 1963 song "Louie Louie" and with Mitchell getting what sounded like a death threat from a U.S. Congressman. Deep Capture has a court date in April 2015 to defend itself against Nazerali's lawsuit.
(Score: 2) by nyder on Wednesday November 05 2014, @10:45AM
I find this article really interesting, but damn is it a long read. If true, it's showing how a modern con artist is using money & influence to change his history. Could of been written better, but at least half way thru I found it worth reading. Going to finish it later though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 05 2014, @01:17PM
> If true, it's showing how a modern con artist is using money & influence to change his history.
What? You mean cancelling right-to-be-forgotten won't stop bad guys from rewriting their history on the internet? [nymag.com] Shocked I am!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by GeddyT on Wednesday November 05 2014, @01:43PM
I've been following Deep Capture since about 2007, and it amazes me that they're as little known as they are. The confusion that you're experiencing is the "Mark Mitchell Wall of Names/Text Syndrome." The stories on Deep Capture are invariably verbose, invariably long, and invariably difficult to follow due to the thousands of characters that come and go so briefly. After I read the hundredth name of somebody I've never heard of, I tend you just glaze over and stop paying attention. Which is sad, because these stories are also invariably fascinating, and the interlinked webs of criminals is really the shocking part.
For me, though, the real value of that website is in their early work, which is now nearly impossible to find on their website (which, as you can see, isn't something to brag about...). Usually I'm not one for conspiracy theories, and I tend to do my homework before getting in line, but the information revealed in Deep Capture was kind of a road map for understanding the financial crime that was running rampant and leading up to the '08 financial crisis (and, largely, continues to this day). If you're interested in this stuff at all, I highly recommend reading Byrne's introduction to Deep Capture's research, which can be found here: http://www.deepcapture.com/introduction-to-the-deep-capture-analysis/ [deepcapture.com] Of particular interest to me were chapters 4, 6, and 1-3, in that order. A great illustration titled, "Hedge Funds to US Soldiers: 'I need a Maybach, so… You can all die too.'" can be found in chapter 6.
The thing about Byrne's explanations of naked short selling, insider trading, and regulatory/media capture is that it's really hard to disbelieve due to being logically consistent and just making so much sense. "Yeah, I can totally see this happening, and it explains a lot."
Over time, many of his predictions and accusations have been proven out. A famous interaction between Jim Cramer and John Stewart, for instance, centered around a series of videos that Deep Capture first brought to light.
Anyway, it's a huge rabbit hole, and hard to follow at times, but I sure had a hard time stopping reading it all.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday November 05 2014, @03:48PM
The naked short selling thing is interesting. Seems like a blatant abuse of the system. If the stock market is designed to raise capital then what is the point of purposely creating a situation where a company cannot do that?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by FlyingSock on Wednesday November 05 2014, @10:54AM
In the story it is mentioned, that (I'm bad with names) is a nobel peace prize nominee.
The nobel comittee deciedes, who may nominate people for a nobel prize. Furthermore, nominations are not made public. Hence, anybody styling themselves as a nobel nominee is at the least misinformed as are those, who would publicly say they nominated somebody. Hence this person is not a nobel nominee, no matter what some members of congress or the other people say.
It irked me, that the author of the article did not point this out (at least in the first half of the article (I have work to do)).
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Wednesday November 05 2014, @12:08PM
No, that was Lemmy Kilminster.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)