"Time-Traveler" Busted For Insider Trading

Chester sent in a story that has been making the rounds for a bit, but if you haven't bumped into it, "Yahoo! TV came up with this weird story about a guy who caught police's attention by gaining $350 million from mere $800 in two weeks. The twisted part is that he justifies his knowledge about stocks by saying he is a time-traveler from year 2256!"

No basis in fact, 100% fiction

[dtolton]

This is an interesting story, and there are several things we
should note about it. First of all, it's posted in the
"Entertainment News & Gossip" section of Yahoo! TV. That should
be a fairly big give away. Second this guy allegedly got
arrested January 28th, yet no major news outlet has picked the
story up.

With those pieces of information let's look at the story. The
story claims this guy made $350 million dollars in two weeks
with only an $800 dollar investment by making 126 high-risk
trades. It also alleges that he came out a winner every time.
The article then leads you to believe the SEC thinks it's
insider trading and that his story about being from the future
is obviously false. Yet any person with reasonable intelligence
will realize that even with insider information, there is no way
someone could make 126 "high-risk" trades and come out on top
every time. To have a record that perfect someone would need
foreknowledge.

The article appears to be trying to persuade us that the man had
insider knowledge, yet when you evaluate the story at face
value you walk away thinking "no way, insider information isn't
*that* good. He *must* be from the future".

The major problems with this story though lie in the basic
facts:

1. There is no Andrew Carlssin being investigated by the SEC
2. The SEC does not have police powers and cannot arrest people
3. The alleged high risk trades didn't take place
4. There is in fact no record of *any* of the events mentioned

I could go on and on, however there is absolutely no solid
factual information to back this story up. I saw this article a
few days before April 1st, so I thought it was some type of
elaborate April fools day joke, but I wanted to put it to rest
once and for all, so I called the SEC Public Relations office.

They said the article is completely made up and has no basis in
fact. It's not even based on an actual investigation.

Of course we knew all this because this story is posted in the
"Gossip" section though.

Weekly World News...?

[lebeau1138]

Uh...you did notice that the story is from the Weekly World News, right?

HOAX REVEALED!

[grimani]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,630-627115 ,00.html

"The SEC has never heard of Carlssin, and several "facts" are plainly untrue. "

wwn

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

Please read here: http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/insider.htm [snopes.com]

Please Remove This

[DarkZero]

This is a hoax. It is "making-the-rounds" as fact, but it is, as anyone that reads the article and isn't stupid immediately realizes, fake. It's from the Weekly World News. It even says it's from the Weekly World News right there at the bottom!

What's next, a front page /. story about Bat Boy fighting in Iraq?

Snopes - false

[Finni]

I can't believe I'm actually posting a link to Snopes.com to Slashdot. I usually just have to do it to the people at work who think that they can buy oil/gasoline from companies that don't trade with Middle Eastern companies, or something.

sigh

At any rate, here you go. [66.165.133.65] No truth - just cuz it's on Yahoo, don't ignore that fact that it was written by the GODDAM WORLD WEEKLY NEWS. Christ on a crutch...

Re:HOAX REVEALED!

[Fenresulven]

I like clickable links [timesonline.co.uk]

Re:No basis in fact, 100% fiction

[calbanese]

And for more info, you can read more on this at Snopes [snopes.com].

Re:Weekly World News...?

[sehryan]

Uh...did you notice that the story has a large foot icon next to it, denoting humor?

Snopes Link

[Maddog Batty]

Snopes debunk this story here [snopes.com]

Its always worth checking with Snopes. That and checking for dupes I guess ;-)

speaking fish in new york story on bbc link r/o

[polished look 2]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2854189.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Obviously Fake

[Cheapoboy]

Everyone knows the world will end Dec. 18th 2062 when Halley's Comet strikes into the earth... people are so easily manipulated

Re:HOAX REVEALED!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it was rejected because it was already posted last week?

It's funny - Laugh!

[Chang]

Look again - this was posted in Slashdot's humor section. See the foot icon.

I am happy to see that

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans still exist in 2256. This is conforting.

It might be stale "news" to us...

[your_mother_sews_soc]

But everyone knows April 17th is "Eastern Orthodox April Fools Day."

Re:a virus *can* melt your cpu

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice troll.

But it's a bit easier to just dip into ring 0, flash the BIOS with code that dramatically overclocks every bus it can find (somewhere around 2000Mhz for the FSB should be about right) and reboot. The BIOS flashing ensures that whatever emergency rescue the chipset might try, it's a bit late. It's obviously extremely unportable code and not in the least bit practical... and it might not actually cause anything to explode, but when tried on a really shite machine we didn't care about losing (the BIOS of which was handily flashable by default) it did make the Arctic Silver 2 on the processor sizzle before the power supply blew (I'll never know why), taking the PCI graphics card, the RAM and the chipset with it.

So, it did make a sort of "pop"/bang noise, yeah, like bursting a balloon, followed by a sizzling noise, followed by an indescribably awful burning smell that took a few hours to really clear.

Hard disk survived though. Had to use hydrofloric acid on that to finish the job :)

m/Weekly World News/ ? : '!' : '?'

[phyxeld]

Can anyone explain to me how this story got so big? I've had a few people send me links, and I've seen it on a few sites... Now slashdot even has it! I mean, WHAT THE FUCK?

It's the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS, people!
(Yes, the tabliod refered to as "The Paper" in So I Married An Axe Murderer)

Now that yahoo is syndicating them, there are lots [yahoo.com] of bullshit stories filled into the yahoo news templates. What makes this one so special that it gets on slashdot? And how many people forwarding it don't actually realize it's from the WWN? I mean, this [weeklyworldnews.com] is the publication that brought us Bat Boy [weeklyworldnews.com] , and the Clinton's Alien Baby stories. And now some crap about a time traveler makes slashdot?

It makes no sense.

10 seconds on google solves this mystery

[kveton]

http://www.ufodigest.com/aprilfool.html

Not only that, the source is quoted as the "Weekly World News" ... this is the same rag that brought you "Bat Boy" and "The Amazing 10,000 lbs Lady".