Fake E-Mail Results in Angry Apple Shareholders

drhamad writes "Apple stock dropped 2.2% today in mid-afternoon trading as Engadget published news based on a faked e-mail inside Apple. 'Apparently an internal memo was sent to several Apple employees--and forwarded to Engadget--around 9am CT today saying that Apple issued a press release with the news that the iPhone was now scheduled for October, and Leopard was delayed until January. About an hour and a half after that e-mail went out, a second e-mail was sent--this time officially from Apple--saying the first e-mail was a fake, and that the delivery schedule for the iPhone and Leopard had not changed.'"

Comments

And when do options expire this month? :-)

[Eternal Vigilance]

Wheeee, fun time trading for somebody today.

Re:And when do options expire this month? :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Yesterday??? We're not that stupid. We've been planning this for months.
It will look like a perfectly normal transaction: we invested the money that we got from our grandmother's estate.
Pity about grandma...she screamed awful loud.

Re:And when do options expire this month? :-)

[rts008]

Steve Ballmer:"Drats! Foiled again!"
*Then throws chair at picture of Steve Jobs*

Re:And when do options expire this month? :-)

[mobby_6kl]

Shorting would be too obvious. Instead, here's Apple employee "get rich quick" method #5234:

• Send out fake email which will result in a good price drop
  
• Buy stock!
  
• Send out official email which denies everything
  
  • Stock bounces back up within 1-2 days
• Sell stock!

They'll never catch me!

Re:And when do options expire this month? :-)

[ninken]

They trace it back to Bill Gates and Steve ballmer, come to find out Apple E-mail servers runs Exchange!

Re:And when do options expire this month? :-)

[jazzyjrw]

A fake Apple email? Sounds like the work of Fake Steve Jobs...

Re:And when do options expire this month? :-)

[Basehart]

Come to think of it, Ballmer reminds me of Evil Plankton more and more these days.

Re:And when do options expire this month? :-)

[EvilTwinSkippy]

It's evil! It's diabolical! It's lemon scented!

Investigation

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody is going to jail as soon as they look to see who sold Apple short.

Probably some 12 year old kid in Nebraska.

Owned

[Eddi3]

I think an 'owned' tag would be appropriate. =)

In other news...

[fahrbot-bot]

...an internal memo was sent to several Apple employees--and forwarded to Engadget...

...several Apple employees filed for unemployment this afternoon.

Re:What are the implications for the website?

[sayfawa]

Punishing reporters for getting a story that completely wrong based on a faulty source they did nothing to verify would resurrect invetigative journalism, not kill it. The reason it is so close to dead is because people give this kind of shoddy work a free pass.

If by punish you mean no one reads their stories anymore so they don't make money and have to stop writing garbage. But there can't be laws against repeating what someone told you. Well, as long as they didn't tell you the HD-DVD key.

Re:Lesson Learned?

[Foxpaw]

I don't believe you.

The first sign something was amiss...

[Gerocrack]

the mail was from sballmer@apple.com