How SpongeTech fans attempted to slime me
On Wednesday, the top two executives of SpongeTech Delivery Systems, a company that makes and sells soap-infused sponges, were arrested on criminal charges of conspiracy to commit fraud and obstruction of justice.
Suddenly, the anonymous phone calls to my office, the e-mails calling me a "whore" and a "hack" and the biting Web postings slamming my reputation ceased.
For seven months I have been reporting on SpongeTech's curious revenue numbers, mystery customers and troublesome money woes. And for seven months, an anonymous band of company supporters have worked tirelessly to harass, intimate and discredit me.
n February, for example, I opened my e-mail to a message board posting urging SpongeTech supporters to go to Amazon.com and slam a book I published in 2006 as revenge for a series of critical stories I was writing about the company.
"BASH KAJA'S BOOK LIKE SHE BASHERS (sic) OUR STOCK!!!!!!!!!," a post by a person who goes by the handle, "Mingy," wrote.
Someone responded, "that's really funny..hope that b**** get's 100's or 1000's of 1 stars!!"
The campaign against me got more personal. Last month, my friends and colleagues were slammed by alarming e-mails warning them that I'm involved in a "criminal enterprise" to destroy SpongeTech.
"Shall it prove, as I suspect it will, that there is a criminal enterprise/organization working to destroy a company called Spongetech, I believe a RICO case could be made against Ms. Whitehouse," the e-mail said.
My father and his consulting firm were also implicated in the made-up stock manipulation scheme, and the slanderous e-mails were distributed to his co-workers.
At the bottom of the e-mails was a link to Web site Stockbasher.com, which carries the very menacing statement warning that "stock bashers" will pay in the form of personal attacks against them and their families.
"We may also target your family if their story is more dramatic and has more fat than your miserable life," it cautions.
Photos of my family, including young children, their work histories and addresses were collected and posted online by "Mingy."
Back in September, The Post wrote an investigative story questioning the existence of five of SpongeTech's six biggest customers, which as it happens is the crux of the civil charges the Securities and Exchange Commission filed against the company last week -- in addition to criminal charges lodged by the US Attorney on Brooklyn.
In an effort to discredit the article, SpongeTech issued a press release titled "SpongeTech® Delivery Systems, Inc. Sets The Record Straight" calling the story "inaccurate" and based on "forgeries."
"Kaja, you are a dirtbag," read a posting by an anonymous online commentator on The Post's Web site that day.
SpongeTech pursued all its critics. In another instance, Spongetech sued the CEO of a competing sponge company and as part of the settlement demanded the CEO write a retraction to comments he made in a story that questioned SpongeTech's sales numbers.
Two weeks before SpongeTech's CEO Michael Metter and CFO Steven Moskowitz were arrested and charged, the New York-based company took its most aggressive shot -- it sued me, The New York Post and several other people -- including David Patch, who runs investigatethesec.com -- on defamation and allegations of running a "short and distort" scheme.
And when it was clear the threat of the lawsuit wasn't going to stop me from writing stories, a lawyer representing SpongeTech -- Alan A. Heller, of Heller, Horowitz & Feit -- e-mailed me a letter to urge me to stop writing about SpongeTech, and promised to go after my stock trading records and those of my "friends and contacts."
"We trust that you will stop your relentless pursuit of this company and its management," the letter concluded.
I didn't stop reporting the news.
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