NEW YORK — A powerful attraction of the Internet for many people is that it offers a stage where players may write their own parts. In the fluid and anonymous world of the Net message boards, a performer once cast as a villain may later take on the role of a hero simply by adopting a new persona.
Consider "Steve Pluvia," an online short-seller who revels in puncturing over-hyped and dubious securities on financial message boards run by Silicon Investor and Yahoo.
His real name is Steve Keyser, also the name of a former target of a Securities and Exchange Commission fraud action. Pluvia denies they are the same person. In any case, he has used a combination of sharp stock analysis and a sarcastic, in-your-face writing style to become a successful cyber-sleuth under the Pluvia alias.
In a recent example, Pluvia was among the first to call attention to several tiny stocks that were inexplicably surging to unprecedented highs in heavy trading in January.
Pluvia's skeptical messages and those of other online bears apparently prompted the SEC to call an unusual two-week trading halt in the stocks. (The SEC declines to reveal the sources that led to its inquiry.)
Two of the stocks, Citron and Electronic Transfer Associates, later were linked by the SEC to an ex-stockbroker with a record of securities fraud. The shares collapsed in price.
In a congratulatory message, Pluvia praised the work of his Silicon Investor allies and said that his own role had been exaggerated.
"I don't care who takes credit, or who took credit," Pluvia wrote, "all I care about is that the scam is uncovered."
Protagonists and Antagonists
Not surprisingly, Pluvia's attacks have made him enemies, one of whose attempts to squelch the online attacks backfired by practically turning Pluvia into a folk hero.
In August 1997, John Westergaard, a veteran stock promoter, posted an Internet message offering a $5,000 cash reward for "the most complete dossier" on Pluvia, who had been attacking one of Westergaard's clients, Premier Laser Systems, an Irvine-based maker of dental lasers.
Pluvia had been insisting in Internet postings that Premier's machines were inferior and overpriced and would never be accepted by dentists. He also questioned the firm's sales figures.
The Westergaard bounty, which many considered an intimidation tactic, became a cause celebre on the Silicon Investor Web site.
