The April Fools' stock hoax and the FBI

Wed, 05 May 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Here's a little number that looks promising: Webnode.com. You read about the company on a hot investment discussion thread at Silicon Investor. Click over to the Webnode site and you find a Business Wire press release explaining that the company has been given a contract from the government to raise $4 billion to fund the creation of the "Next Generation Internet." Webnode will raise the money by selling 40 million Internet "nodes" for an initial price of $100 each.

Sounds fabulous -- the old Internet is slower than your bathtub drain. You missed out on Yahoo, Amazon and eBay, but you're not going to miss out on this.

Then some of the claims posted to the board begin to sound just too outlandish. You notice the date on the press release, April 1, and it hits you: Webnode is a prank.

You may feel stupid and a bit pissed off. At least you didn't lose a cent. And next time you see a great new investment idea on the Net, you may think a little bit harder.

That's not where the Webnode story ends, though. The FBI was called in to investigate and the perpetrators of the prank are being sued. A few days afterwards, another Internet stock hoax involving an actual public company called PairGain caused its stock price to gyrate wildly. The FBI has arrested a suspect.

Salon.com > David Zgodzinski

The April Fools' stock hoax and the FBI