January/February 2009 Issue

Conspiracy Watch: The Wisest Guys in the Room

Did the Mafia kneecap Wall Street?

Illustration: Peter Hoey

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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!)

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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