Comment by Over2Chars 3 days ago
I think its brought attention to numerous cases of accounting and other shenanigans.
What I've noticed, casually, is that they often target companies or management with a pattern of fraud and abuse, and surprise they keep doing it.
VP of Sales gets slapped on the wrist for illegal tactics?
A few years later he goes on to be promoted to CEO and.... does the same thing!
Amazing.
I doubt that's the whole of it, but I'm sure a past pattern definitely comes into play. As someone once said, we are faithfully true to our defects - we tend to repeat our mistakes.
Someone who plays fast and loose with the law to get their sales bonus doesn't just find Jesus and give up one day. More likely he gets promoted and does it all over again.
But some of the short seller research I've heard of like interviewing ex-employees about internal irregularities is quite clever.
In another case (I think it was a different short seller) he went to the actual physical locations declared on paperwork as "offices" and found them to be empty warehouses.
So this kind of interviewing and boots on ground stuff is next level.
I’m interested in the materials they open source.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the sum of it is “has the company been caught doing fraud more than once and haven’t been shut down? They’re still doing fraud”.