john-mackey

Sockpuppet Dave Craig Is Our John Mackey, Our Lee Siegel

Joshua Stein · 07/18/07 12:40PM

John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, was recently caught trash-talking competitor Wild Oats on various Internet forums under the name Rahodeb, an anagram of his wife's name. Not so long ago, critic Lee Siegel posed as an anonymous commenter beneath his own essays and brought himself to shame. And now we have our own story of greed, deception, regret and Pinkberry with our commenter named Dave Craig. Soon after the Mackey story broke, we got an email from Craig asking that we remove all his comments. What an odd request, we thought. Then we thought a little more. And Googled.

When executives don fake identities

Tim Faulkner · 07/16/07 05:13PM

Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey is not the only person using a fictional identity online to fluff his ego and advance his business aims. The New York Times refers to the practice as sock-puppeting , "the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one's self, allies or company." It provides several examples of executives, writers, politicos, and bloggers whose alter egos ultimately caught up with them. Most notable is conspiracy theorist and CEO of Overstock.com, Patrick M. Byrne.

John Mackey's sordid e-commerce fling

Owen Thomas · 07/13/07 09:22AM

The "Rahodeb" incident, in which Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey was caught touting his company's stock on Yahoo Finance message boards, is not the first time Mackey has shown extremely poor judgment when it comes to the Internet. Around the same time he started posting on Yahoo Finance as "Rahodeb," a handle taken from the name of his wife, Deborah Morin, he launched a dotcom called WholePeople, which turned out to be an out-and-out disaster, as I wrote back in 2000. But as I reported that story, I also heard persistent rumors that there was a lot of sleeping around going on at Whole Foods, starting at the top. Sounds like the kind of thing we approve of. In most cases. But not the way Mackey did it. Here's why:

Whole Foods CEO proud to be an Internet blowhard

Tim Faulkner · 07/12/07 01:00PM

John Mackey, the eccentric chief executive of flabbergastingly expensive grocery chain Whole Foods Market, has been exposed, the Wall Street Journal reports, for posting comments on Yahoo Finance message boards cheerleading himself and the company he co-founded, and bashing then-competitor Wild Oats. How long has this gone on? Eight years, which is plenty of time for him, in theory, to boost Whole Foods' stock price and dent Wild Oats' enough so that his company could take over its rival, in a deal that's now drawing scrutiny from the government. Illegal? Who knows. Arrogant, narcissistic, foolish, and compulsive? You bet, and that's why we love it.