Whole Foods CEO Used Sock Puppet

The Vegan captain of the Whole Foods grocery chain spent 8 years on the Yahoo message boards using a pseudonym to pump his stocks, depress the stocks of his competitors, and compliment himself on how good he looked in the company’s annual stock report.

 
Maybe Mackey should be posing with a giant bag of nuts.

When someone does this, its called using a “sock puppet.”  They create an online persona to make arguments they themselves can’t make, or agree to arguments made by his real self.  Its also a sign of an inflated ego or a deranged lunatic.

And because of this activity, plus because the merger with Wild Oats would create a natural-foods monopoly, the Federal Government is going to reject the merger.

From the WSJ here:

In January 2005, someone using the name “Rahodeb” went online to a Yahoo stock-market forum and posted this opinion: No company would want to buy Wild Oats Markets Inc., a natural-foods grocer, at its price then of about $8 a share.

The comments were typical of banter on Internet message boards for stocks, but the writer’s identity was anything but. Rahodeb was an online pseudonym of John Mackey, co-founder and chief executive of Whole Foods Market Inc. Earlier this year, his company agreed to buy Wild Oats for $565 million, or $18.50 a share.
 
For about eight years until last August, the company confirms, Mr. Mackey posted numerous messages on Yahoo Finance stock forums as Rahodeb. It’s an anagram of Deborah, Mr. Mackey’s wife’s name. Rahodeb cheered Whole Foods’ financial results, trumpeted his gains on the stock and bashed Wild Oats. Rahodeb even defended Mr. Mackey’s haircut when another user poked fun at a photo in the annual report. “I like Mackey’s haircut,” Rahodeb said. “I think he looks cute!”

Mr. Mackey’s online alter ego came to light in a document made public late Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission in its lawsuit seeking to block the Wild Oats takeover on antitrust grounds.

Mr. Mackey posted on the company Web site, saying that the FTC was quoting Rahodeb “to embarrass both me and Whole Foods.” He also said: “I posted on Yahoo! under a pseudonym because I had fun doing it. Many people post on bulletin boards using pseudonyms.” He said that “I never intended any of those postings to be identified with me.”

Mr. Mackey’s post continued: “The views articulated by rahodeb sometimes represent what I actually believed and sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes I simply played ‘devil’s advocate’ for the sheer fun of arguing. Anyone who knows me realizes that I frequently do this in person, too.”

Like Whole Foods itself, Mr. Mackey, a 53-year-old vegan, is somewhat unconventional. He and his wife practice yoga and meditation and own a 720-acre ranch west of Austin. He once took a sabbatical to hike the Appalachian Trail.

There is a Whole Foods in my town, and I don’t shop there because the prices are way too expensive.  And I like eating produce that has been sanitized because e-coli infections like the two outbreaks this past year both came from “organic” farms.  But I like Whole Foods’ selection of spices.  If I ever make another batch of mead I might go there to get some fresh cinnamon or allspice.

But if this merger doesn’t go through and Whole Foods’ stocks continue to sink, will they fire their vegan nutjob of a CEO?  If you are interested, all of his posts are still on Yahoo here.