They have very colorful nicknames. There's raincityman 21, nastypigboy, sonofpigboy, La Jolla Dick, bigdaddydude, poopersnooper 15 and mediaexpert. And they're all apparently experts on the fates and fortunes of New Frontier Media, an adult company out of Boulder, Colorado. New Frontier Media is a publically-held company listed on NASDAQ. [NASDAQ:NOOF]
In fact, if you go to the Yahoo! Financial page and the NOOF chat room featuring commentary on New Frontier Media, http://messages.yahoo.com/?action=q&board=NOOF, you'll probably find out more about the company that you'd really care to know.
Action began heating up on the site last week when Luke Ford posted its address. Until then, the site was calm and placid, featuring what most financial sites usually feature - highbrow chats about the stock and future growth of a company. Now it's Dodge City. What's happened in the last week has turned into a lowbrow, Three Stooges pie-throwing melee of name-calling, threats, and gypsy curses. The postings on NOOF have shot up like the company stock, leading one to suspect that any publicity is good publicity.
It all began with the filing of the J.P. Lipson lawsuit against New Frontier Media and company heads Mark Kreloff and Michael Weiner. AVN reported on the suit, and Luke Ford reported on AVN's reporting of it. But Ford went one better. He put in the link to the Yahoo! chat site.
Call it coincidence, but things haven't been the same way since. Lipson has been accused of being master of the Ponzi scheme and a former federal felon, too boot. Dan Bender, former partner in New Frontier Media, has been labelled the snitch in a complex Deep Throat scenario. Both Kreloff and Weiner have been linked, sexually, to two waitresses in Santa Monica, not to mention Kreloff's alleged liaisons with a female bodybuilder in La Jolla. Sonofpigboy [pig boy's the informal nickname that's been given to Lipson] has gone so far to link the events in Boulder to the Jon Benet-Ramsey murder investigation, inferring that no justice will ever be served in either case.
Someone named stockreem has actually leveled gypsy curses on one of the squealers.
Stockreem writes: "The bain of bulletin boards has now arrived. I curse you and all that would denegrade [sic] and mud sling in this obviously personal way. Your luck will run out and your lifestyle will be reduced to the level of your mind...in the gutter!" Stockreem didn't stop there, he's post-scripted follow-up curses in case that one didn't work.
All the mudslinging finally prompted Kreloff to post the following statement.
Kreloff: "One of the great freedoms we enjoy as Americans is the Freedom of Speech. I am grateful for this freedom and willing to tolerate the views and opinions of people that do not necessarily agree with my own opinions. While I respect the rights of the people posting negative and patently false information about my family, my company and myself, I can no longer sit on the sidelines and allow this type of 'bashing' to continue without a response."
Kreloff went on to use his bulletin board time to put in a commercial plug for the company and its recent $5 million equity placement, meaning that the company has evaded the threat of being de-listed from NASDAQ. New Frontier Media had to come up with a quick $2 million by the end of March or risk that fate.
The most recent postings on the bulletin board, however, are examples of outhouse lawyering at it's best. On a 3/9 posting,Takenotice 22 draws a connection between the NOOF postings and an Internet case involving the Seattle-based Wade Cook Financial Corp. Cook, a published stock guru, has filed a slander suit naming 10 "John Does" as defendants. Talk has been that Cook's attorneys might actually subpoena Yahoo to find the names of the defendants. According to Cook's attorneys, the defendants posted slanderous comments on Yahoo about Cook allegedly accepting kickbacks.
If all of this is true and valid, perhaps this sets up a day in court for Gene Ross. Ross has been accused on the NOOF site for allegedly taking kickbacks from Lipson in turn for writing about Lipson's suit.
