The silliest Steve Jobs rumor yet
This is not a story about Steve Jobs or Apple (AAPL).
It's not even a story about a Steve Jobs rumor.
It's a story about a nasty piece of work called Palluxo Media, based in Vancouver, B.C., that just stooped to a new low.
As an online news outlet, Palluxo.com is all over the lot. Its current crop of stories includes pieces about Jewish and Bosnian genocides, Cuban spies, an Acapulco drug shootout and a David Carradine forensic photo.
But it also bills itself as Canada's "Mac Dose of All Things Apple," and that's how it caught my attention last February, offering dubious investment advice ("it’s highly likely that the stock’s best days are over") just before Apple began a 40-plus point march from $99 a share to more than $140.
"You fell for Palluxo?," wrote "cynyc" — one of my regular readers — when I cited that quote as an attempt to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about Apple. "That site only exists to promote the agenda of Apple shorts [speculators betting that the stock will go down]."
I thought my reader was being overly cynical, but the recent history of Palluxo's Steve Jobs coverage suggests he may be onto something.
Consider this sequence of Palluxo headines:
- December 31, 2008: “CEO Steve Jobs on Deathbed, Prognosis Poor”
- May 23, 2009: "Apple Rumor: Steve Jobs Could Die Any Day"
and Thursday's prizewinner:
- June 11, 2009: "Apple Rumor: Steve Jobs Seen Kissing Unidentified Man"
Not that there's anything wrong with that, as Jerry Seinfeld would say.
But this last piece — which ran under the byline "Daisy Jefferson" — contradicts the earlier ones (Jobs is described as looking "frail, but otherwise energized and in good spirits") and its prose is so purple ("handsome sportsman" … "swapping spit") that it reads like something out of The Onion.
It claims to be based on a tip from an unidentified source who says he witnessed the event through binoculars, yet demands $75,000 for evidence captured on a security camera.
You almost want to give Palluxo the benefit of the doubt and assume that the story is a prank, planted on their site to embarrass them.
But how would you know? Except for the physical address of the "head office" (1755 Robson Street, Suite #3334, Vancouver B.C. V6G 3B7), the site gives you no way to reach its editors for comment or verification.
Even the contact listed on their Web domain registration — management@palloxo.com — turns out to be a dead end, as This Young Economist's Tony Cookson discovered last month when tried to complain about a story of his that Palluxo copied and ran without permission. (Its subject, according to Cookson: why he "detests Apple products.")
Do we detect a theme here?
According to "cynyc," my New York City-based reader, Palluxo is "a clever but thinly disguised marketing tool for the shorts. They don’t shy away from misreporting facts and they spread rumors with abandon. It is no coincidence that they’re published in Canada, it is to avoid scrutiny from the SEC."
Perhaps it's time for British Columbia's security commission to take a look.
1755 Robson Street is a mailbox place. The "suite" # is a mailbox #. Simple surveillance on the box will discover who is responsible.
Apple shareholders would be pleased by such a report–kissing a dog, eating a greasy sandwich, any scrap as a positive barameter of Steve Job's vigor.
If you want to know who owns/runs this, where the server is, what other sites they own, etc…. go to this link:
I live in Vancouver and unless something has changed recently there is no 33-story building at that location on Robson. So it's probably just a PO Box.
I'm not a computer whiz or a lawyer. I can however to BOLD and UNDERLINE and know enough to see the potential for a lawsuit.
that said….Steve JOBS ought to be able to trace the computer being used by Palluxo and he ought to be able to then sue.
Case closed.
I know Vancouver pretty well, having grown up there, (and am going to be in Vancouver this weekend, but unfortunately nowhere near the downtown). The street address is home to some other questionable businesses, and unfortunately (for them) some legitimate ones. I would say this is probably a residential address given its location on Robson, and the suite number. Most Vancouver businesses with addresses alluding to that high a floor (30+) are further east on Georgia, Robson and Hastings. Likely some loser of a short seller, working from home, trying to manipulate the market. Sadly Vancouver remains a Scam Capital, as was first reported many years ago.
If the story is so silly – which it obviously is – why are you dignifying it by repeating it? I would have expected Fortune to be above the usual "having it both ways" media BS. Disappointing.
I'm a compliance officer at a wealth management firm in BC. I come across these potential scams periodically, and have reported others to the BC Securities Commission. They are usually pretty good at following up on anything that seems fishy.
I sent an email to the BCSC and reported this potential scam.
Agree with Rossor's comment. Philip Elmer-DeWitt (PED) is performing a valuable service by shining the spotlight on a very dubious website in Canada that has been the source of some very nasty AAPL FUD.
Lazy news services often grab sensational posts and run with them without any fact-checking. A small story can easily flame up into an inferno. Short sellers love this. By the time the story is refuted, the damage has been done and positions covered.
By calling BS on a site for consistently lighting these matches, PED is alerting readers, blogs, journalists, news services, et. al. that they're being played by Palluxo. "Consider the source" is a journalism golden rule. PED’s post is a clarion call for other news organizations to do just that … consider the source, and if you’re being played call BS.
The real story today is not the tabloid Steve Jobs’ headline … the story is Palluxo. Who the “F” are they? Why are they hiding? Why can’t you reach them? What's their real agenda? Is the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) and SEC looking at Palluxo? If not, why not? The SEC and CSA supposedly have new regulations in place to curb false rumor-mongering.
If you want to share the Palluxo story with the SEC. Yes, they’re Keystone Cops, but they’re all we’ve got. Here you go >
1755 Robson Street, Suite #3334, Vancouver B.C. V6G 3B7 is a post office according to a friend in Vancouver.
Thanks for writing this piece. Nice work getting a larger audience.
I would suggest one correction: the subject of my original article is "Why I love Apple, despite detesting Apple products." The whole point was to show some love for the company — even from someone who is a permanent PC user.
It's a different perspective, but worth a read.
What I find most interesting about this article is the descripton of the sleazy way shorts (sometimes? often? always?) operate to pull down Apple stock.
And of course they're aided and abetted by companies that have everything to gain if Apple is badmouthed.
In the meantime, Apple just keeps on showing these losers up for what they are by continuing to focus on quality and innovation. In short, they let their products do the talking.
I wonder what the issues are with such a cross-border stock-manipulation game. AAPL's traded in the US, "Palluxo" is in Canada, their web servers could be in China or India or Burkina Faso for all we know…..
Thank you for this piece, Philip. Too many writers would pass these kinds of wretched rumors along without examining the source. You drove a stake through this libel very effectively.
I'm palluxo is enjoying the extra traffic you have driven towards their site. Thanks for encouraging them to publish more crap.
Hi guys, I really dont think this is worth a comment. So dont listen to such a thing as in the article
MatsRG
I think the whole site is a hoax, since the rest of the "news" are hoaxes…