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March 07, 2005
The headline you DON'T want over your picture
Dot-Con Job is the headline over Naveen Jain's picture on the cover of the Sunday Seattle times. Generally I find local media quite unfriendly to business. They tend to focus on the negative to sell papers. Unfortunately in this case I must agree. Due to a two year intensive campaign by the Seattle Times, they have gotten access to documents previously sealed by a court. This is good journalism. For better or worse, now it is clear that Seattle has its own Enron. Martha has nothing on Naveen. The documents show a pattern of deception and mis-representation of information to analysts and investors (Martha only traded on inside information on ANOTHER stock, not her own). Read the articles. You will find a case study on being caught up in the moment with personal greed gone wild (by everyone involved, investors, investment bankers, the company, accountants, etc.). Infospace was a product of the times. Investors wanted to believe the impossible was possible and Naveen sold the dream very well. Selling the dream is not criminal. Lying about progress toward the dream is. Covering up missteps along the path is. Creating a pyramid scheme is. Unfortunately from this series it seems that Naveen and some of the others crossed the line.
I don't expect this to be the end, I expect it to be the beginning of a new chapter. The Seattle Times would like nothing more than to have an Enron to report on locally. They will create one if they have to.
Posted by Martin at March 7, 2005 10:44 AM
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