The Doxing of Michelle Celarier

NYPost reporter Michelle Celarier has always been my biggest fan :: she told me so herself … right before she accused me of attempting to blackmail her. She’s fun like that.

Michelle has written dozens of short :: obsequiously pro-Ackman / anti-Herbalife … articles over the past year and a half. But in my considered estimation :: she has done more harm to the cause of stopping Herbalife than any other single person … and that by some margin.

Having failed to slow her disaster train of suckbagery via all the non-public mechanisms I could concoct :: I reluctantly bring this story here … to a site that barely exists because free speech on the Internet is a lie.

rainy day introductions

This is Michelle Celarier’s strange idea of biggest fandom …

… all mentions of a single fake robot post in which Michelle {barely} got a mention. Michelle fucking loves to mention a Michelle mention.

Michelle also loves to mention Bill Ackman … and the central position that she’s decided he’s going to occupy in her life. Spend more than three minutes talking to her … and she’ll start namedropping Bill Ackman on your ass like a 16 year old meangirl talking up her spot on the cheerleading squad. It’s grossly unprofessional … and just plain gross.

When Michelle and I met last year … I was in New York to give a presentation about fighting pyramid schemes to the so-smart wonks at Pershing Square. It wasn’t very productive {as I failed to accomplish most of my objectives} :: but it was fun … here’s a taste from the slide show …

Yeah … it was fun.

I was somewhat reluctant about meeting with Celarier though :: because her dubious ethics and lack of substance were obvious to me from the beginning … and I sometimes/always have a hard time keeping my mouth shut. But it was only lunch :: and maybe I was wrong about her … at least she was making an effort to sorta write about scams.

I {taking the form of a skinny white boy} rolled into the too-fancy-to-be-good restaurant with another reporter :: late … and soaking wet with September rain. Michelle re-re-mentioned that she liked my Hempton article … I pretended to give a shit. She doesn’t actually like the article :: she doesn’t even understand the article … she just likes how I was a total prick to someone she sees as her enemy. But John Hempton is not my enemy … he’s just a smug irrelevancy.

Michelle knew nothing about me … nothing. But no more than five minutes after the other reporter had departed :: she started talking about Bill Ackman in an overfamiliar fashion … unwittingly confessing her multitude of sins in her zeal to posture and boast. Michelle Celarier’s objectivity isn’t tainted by her hopeful expectation of future gains :: it’s completely destroyed by it … and it was almost like she was proud of it.

michelle writes stuff and stuff :: sources say

The New York Attorney General is probing Herbalife :: says Michelle Celarier … but to date not so much the New York Attorney General. So the article is no shit sourced is like this …

The Post has learned.

sources said.

sources said.

sources said.

Ackman declined further comment.

… like she’s proud of it :: proud of how she’s done nothing.

Michelle and her cats speak for Canada too :: she’s just that everywhere …

Here are the sources you can confirm that heck-of-a-job story with …

The Post has learned.

sources familiar with the inquiry said.

sources said.

one source said.

sources said.

these sources added.

distributors told The Post last year

… wait for it …

It is possible that the current inquiry is believed to be looking at the possible violation of the existing prohibition order, said a source familiar with the investigation

It is possible that it is believed that Michelle Celarier is a hack flack :: sources were possibly rumored to have speculated … at least I think that’s what they speculated cause I was drunk at the time so I can’t be responsible for knowing for sure :: sources said … journalism!!

Michelle’s terrible fake journalism temps you into reasonably believing that she has become Pershing Square’s mouthpiece. Like they tell her what to say :: she dumbs it down and strips it of its useful substance … and then prints it in a tabloid broadsheet along with all the other side-boob and Gwyneth Paltrow uncoupling news that’s fit to print.

But it’s much less interesting than that. If Pershing Square wanted to str8 buy off a reporter :: they could afford to buy the best … reporters are barely more expensive than tacos. Michelle Celarier is :: uhm … not the best.

thanks for thinking of me

Last October the New York Post’s “Senior Business Reporter” Michelle Celarier was just sitting around minding her own latte :: when she was contacted by the incredibly sexy sounding “Horatio Gutierrez” … who made her an offer that only a fake reporter could fail to refuse. Horatio had an audio of an Herbalife President’s Team member saying something spectacularly stupid {not exactly an item in rare supply} …

“There’s nothing to it. You just show up in a nice suit and a fancy car and trick a few Mexicans into thinking they’re going to make a million dollars selling milkshakes.”

… the PresTeam member was purported to have said :: but there was a catch :: as Horatio explained …

I must admit that there is a portion of the recording immediately prior to this statement in which he says, “People think that…” And then he goes on to explain that this is not the case and that you must actually work hard and so on. But those portions could easily “disappear” as I am 100% sure that I am the only owner of this audio…

“Hows about I send you an audio of me telling you to fuck off?” … is what she should have said within a couple of seconds :: instead she refuses to deny she said this …

“I would love to have the audio!!” … I mean seriously?

Seriously?

Hey Michelle :: if you want to write some actual stories about Herbalife … I got about 60 fucking audios I could send you … no fundamental betrayal of your professional ethics required … I’ll even edit them down into three minute segments so you can handle the workload.

Ol’ Horatio must have been shocked at how easy it was to show Michelle for what she is :: “I will edit the audio beforehand so that only the parts that sound most incriminating remain” … he pushed. “Sure–” she replied.

How is this not a fireable offense for a journalist?

Because reporters don’t have ethics … you say. Good point. Because the concentration of sociopathy is almost as high among reporters as it is among scammers … you also say. Fair enough. Forget ethics then. How is it not a fireable offense that the New York Post’s “Senior Business Reporter” couldn’t recognize that stupid shit as an over-the-top obvious setup?

Jittery whistleblowing sources do not sound like Horatio Gutierrez :: at all … ever. You’d think a reporter who relied so heavily on anonymous sourcing would know that.

Michelle couldn’t be anymore up in other people’s business :: but she made no public excuse for this incident … and refused to answer my serious questions about it.

yesterday’s letters from the future

On January 23rd of this year :: Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey announced that he’d called for an investigation into Herbalife’s business practices … sending letters to both the FTC and SEC. It was pretty great news for people who care about hating pyramid schemes :: great news that Michelle Celarier managed to mangle into an epic shitstorm of awful … almost single handed.

Michelle’s article about the announcement posted copies of the Senator’s letter which were dated January 22nd … the day before the announcement. TheSkeptic21 :: an anonymous blogger and tweeter inflamer who has called out many of Michelle’s mistakes … noticed on the 29th.

John Hempton pretended he noticed too.

It seemed very bad :: but the Senator had first posted letters dated January 22nd to his website … then later updated them. Many obsessives who downloaded the letters immediately after the announcement :: had the January 22nd dated letters … I have them. But that’s not what Michelle Celarier attached to her NYPost blurb. Michelle attached photocopies of those originally posted versions :: which had been sent to her by Pershing Square via email. Two of those documents listed copier@persq.com as the author in the metadata.

I hoped I’d be able to warn Michelle that she’d been caught making a lazy and stupid {intentional?} mistake :: before she started lying about it … but it was already too late.

Her lie was SO MUCH worse than the truth :: because it had the Senator first posting January 22nd dated documents that had come off PSQ copiers … which would have been very bad indeed. I told Michelle :: privately … that she was nailed by the metadata so she could retract her lies and stop adding jet fuel to the fire. I very much didn’t like/trust her by this point :: but I was still shocked by her response …

I know!!

Yes I was having trouble uploading and bill had also sent them to me and I was in a hurry

She knew :: yet she made no retraction … and kept on telling the same devastating {for everyone else} lie. I waited and watched for seven more hours :: Michelle was vowing to get to the bottom of what she knew was not a mystery … and nominating herself for Pulitzers.

OMG :: after I was done vomiting nails and rivets … I called her out again.

SD ::

[Y]ou are making a very bad situation much worse by continuing to discourse about it in public while being something less than forthright.

MC ::

I now realize that, But it is too complicated to explain Oh well this news cycle shall pass Not a crime to get them from Psq is it? No

She was going to try and let her mega-lie ride :: simultaneously unethical and idiotic.

SD ::

If you got documents stamped with PSQ’s data from Sen Markey’s site, as you are currently telling the twitterverse, then that would be epic bad for the Senator … and may indicate a crime depending on PSQ’s trading activities these last few weeks.

She finally got it … and copped to her mistake {though without the faintest trace of contrition} …

But it was too late :: by that point several real reporters were circling … having sniffed the possibility of a huge and scandalous story that wasn’t.

The next day Michelle forwarded me {a predator of whom she knows not} the email that Bill Ackman had sent her with the letters attached. The document filenames on the copies he’d sent were long and auto-generated by the scanner :: all contained timestamps after the official press release. The email to which they were attached :: reprinted here in full :: gave Michelle her marching orders from the top …

Great day!

… or not.

The smell of corruption and press manipulation was fucking thick in the air with this thing. I can’t blame anyone :: including John Hempton :: for thinking the worst … because I certainly did. But when you did the real reporting you found out that the Markey letter story was just a story about Michelle Celarier being totally ridiculous … again. Get real reporters snooping for bad stuff though :: and they’ll prolly find it … because the world is a pretty bad place.

• The Boston Globe :: Markey may have exaggerated claims about Herbalife

• The New York Times :: After Big Bet, Hedge Fund Pulls the Levers of Power: Staking $1 Billion That Herbalife Will Fail, Then Lobbying to Bring It Down

I hated that NYTimes piece almost to the point of implosion {because it was so bad for the cause I care about} :: and loved that NYTimes piece {because it was so well researched … and it was all like … smack! … suck it rich people!}. It included much about the Markey letter :: and opened with a sequence that had Mr. Ackman at a dinner with fellow hedge funders reading bits of a letter California Representative Linda Sánchez had sent to the FTC … before that letter was public. Michelle Celarier played an importantly gross role in that shitscape as well.

The letter sent by Ms. Sánchez in June, which Mr. Ackman discussed at the dinner, did not move the stock. Ms. Sánchez’s office acknowledges that it sent a copy of this letter to Mr. Ackman’s team a month before it issued its news release on the matter, and says that it backdated the letter when making it public because The New York Post reported its existence a week after the dinner.

Maybe it’s Herbalife that’s paid off Michelle … all she has to do for her money is keep being the fucking worstest.

who is skeptic21?

This is what it’s like trying to get lawyers and important people at Pershing Square to recognize big PR trouble lurking in the shallow waters of the twitters …

SD :: Michelle’s on twitter lying her ass off in a fashion that’s going bring huge chucks of fiery lava raining down on the heads of everyone brave enough to be fighting this frightening fight!

PSQ :: I’m sorry did you say anything after the word Twitter? … because that’s right about when I stopped listening and started entering text into this BlackBerry.

… so it was kinda a shocker to me that they even knew TheSkeptic21 existed :: no less them spending the monies to track down his identity.

Skeptic21 has been fiercely :: and rather humorously … critical of everything Bill Ackman and Pershing Square have done since the beginning of this Herbalife fight. Skeptic21 argues that HLF is not a pyramid scheme based mostly on legalisms :: ignoring ground level operational realities {where there can be no hiding the horrors} … the same mistake that everyone on Wall Street makes.

But criticisms of Ackman does not a defense of Herbalife make. It doesn’t matter if Ackman sprouts horns and starts eating babies right in front of their mothers … Herbalife is still a fucking scam.

I’m mostly bored by the stock talk :: but some of Skeptic21’s articles/research/criticisms have added to my understanding of the situation … like the results from an FTC FOIA request he did which seemed to show Michelle Celarier inferring her “sources” for a story from thin air. And unlike the typical MLM defender-troll :: Skeptic21 is clearly smart … he can even think and write in complete sentences. There was never anything to worry about with this dude.

But still … he did fuck up. He decided to say that Shane Dinneen :: formally the #1 brainiac on the HLF case for PSQ … had been “fired.”

It’s a pretty terrible and unacceptable thing to say if it’s not true :: and it wasn’t true … so totally weakballs. It also gave off a pretty serious creep vibe :: because Shane was actually gone/leaving … and Skeptic21 seemed to somehow know that Shane wasn’t coming into work before there had been any sort of announcement. There could have been an innocent explanation for him knowing :: and maybe there was :: but it also turned out that his girlfriend worked in the same building for another hedge fund who had an Herbalife long position … which isn’t very innocent at all.

Anywayz :: it’s not the worst thing I’ve heard this year … it’s not even in the top 9000. Hedge fund gossip anonymously dished by cancer researching boyfriend of lady hedge fund analyst? :: cry me a river … big enough for my yacht!

doxing the doxer

Hunting down Skeptic21’s identity … fine. But publicly outing him :: aka doxing … was a terrible move … an embarrassing move … and the wrong thing to do. He shouldn’t have speculated about Shane when he didn’t have all {or any} of the facts :: but the same goes for Michelle Celarier …

Doxing an Internet critic :: attacking as it does the whole idea of Internet anonymity … should not be done without an extraordinary justification. Anonymity is not an absolute legal right :: and it prolly never can be … but it certainly should be an aspirational virtue that serious and right thinking people attempt to respect. The right of the little guys to speak straight at the face of the big guys :: it’s so important … and it’s one of America’s best things. If Herbalife victims felt comfortable complaining about their bad experiences to the Internet … Herbalife would have imploded long ago.

Still … it’s complicated. This doxing has been coming for months … and I’ve been strenuously objecting to anyone who would listen {or pretend to listen}. Had Pershing Square done this themselves on their own websites :: or had it been done by a real reporter who took their ethical obligations seriously {see eg James Risen} … then I would have sucked it up and said nothing. I don’t know everything … and I’m not always right.

But that it was Michelle Celarier :: whose own behavior has been so consistently reprehensible :: and whose personal vengeance motive is so conspicuous … that is impossible for me to endure in silence.

I told Michelle that if she did this thing I would react aggressively :: and negatively against it … because I fight for the victims and I’m sick of her shitting on the cause with her amoral actions. She reports gossip :: cites almost exclusively to anon sources {who may not exist at all} :: does no real research … and has only her own personal {though never fully disclosed} interests at heart. She’s the last person on this fucking Earth who should be calling out Skeptic21.

You are just representing your interests. Don’t pretend otherwise.

… says she to me.

Huh. I’d never noticed that. I kinda thought I was risking everything :: every day … for people I’ll never know. I thought I was enduring stalkers :: death threats :: lawsuits :: censorship … and all forms of abuse. I thought I’d turned down money :: mentions :: honors :: and opportunities … all to keep this fight purely focused on what’s best for the millions of people I’ve been lucky enough to represent these past six years.

I take issue with your saying you represent the victims, you are an anonymous blogger who , last I knew,was unemployed.

If victims have hired you, lease let me know.

… says Michelle :: whose spiteful vindictiveness is notorious.

I take issue with the number of times I’ve been forced to take issue with Michelle Celarier :: here’s hoping these 3000 words are the last time.

… lease let me know.

>> bleep bloop