Dear Robert,
The week following 911 someone called me out of the blue.
He said he was worried. Concerned?
I asked why?
He said he was reading through the list of people who had died
in that tragedy and low and behold someone with exactly the
same name as me had passed away in the rubble.
He thought that maybe I was there on that sad day.
Or maybe it was my cousin.
He said he was very upset for the whole week.
The first 2 days he tried calling me but no one was there.
I was out of town, but Frank thought I was dead.
He went on to say how he cried. Literally lost it.
It is ironic how jumping to conclusions can hurt us.
I remember 2 years ago.
I was working in one of the city's finest steakhouses.
One day, the boss gets a phone call.
It was the bank manager.
He was informing the boss that he was late on his personal
loan by 3 payments and he risked facing the consequences.
Boss asked "What personal loan?"
Bank manager said your loan of consolidation for 35 thousand.
Boss replied that he never made such a loan.
The boss was a victim of someone who had assumed his
identity by re-creating the boss"s social insurance card,
birth certificate and medical card.
When the frauder was finally tracked down, it was a former
business associate who had done this to give my boss
a bad time; in a attempt to destroy his credibility.
Sound familiar?
The story I just shared with you illustrates how easy it
is for anyone with bad intentions, to assume our identities
and then to file an application for a loan, a car, other credit cards, an sometimes even a bankruptcy petition; while attempting to destroy our reputations in the process.
Once an application is filed (by someone pretending to be the person in question)it quickly becomes public knowledge and then everyone who is exposed to the info
quickly come to the wrong conclusion.
Was it coincidental that the message board at raging bull was
made aware so quickly?
Not by a long shot.
When I read a similar post on the cbs marketwatch
message board
I responded by asking the poster the following:
"Have you ever seen JE's signature on his existing driver's
liscense? Did you compare JE's signature to the signature on the complaint? Do they match?"
The person could not answer yes to the question.
And you even said it that it was unverified yourself.
So I then asked, if you claim yourself to be someone responsable, don't you think it makes sense to have that kind of verification?
He then went on to say that he jumped to the wrong conclusion.
I asked him "Who will apologize?"
The companys' reputation, Johns' and investors' sentiment
along witht the share price end up paying the price of the "misinformation."
I then asked "Who would benefit from spreading a rumour like this?"
The answer is clear.
Over the last month I have seen Raging Bull message board being used for the purpose of misleading investors with the
wrong information.
I must insist that the "rumour habits" of raging bull remain at "raging bull"; and I hope in the future, when someone else
is spreading unverified lies (the bk rumour is false)someone
else will not only clarify the truth, but will insist that the one who posted the rumour in the first place "apologize" to all the members of this message board.
