Homestore: When the shiznit goes down.

Homestore, the company I worked for back in the days before the dot com bubble burst had a young CEO that managed to escape all the ensuing indictments for 'cooking the books' as they say. Well, that is, until now.

It's strange, had it not been for their doing I wouldn't have made the money I did. However, who knows what may have been in store for Homestore had they not cooked the books. I wonder if the stock would still be at $1.76. Although they nearly have a monopoly in online realestate listings, as well as backing from the NAR (national association of realtors) it'll probably take years for the stock to rebound.

I can remember one of the commercials that was made when I still worked for the company (1999~2001). It had a large budget with a hollywood special makeup effects artist - (Rob Bottin). It was amazing how much money they were wasting on commercials, and even the Homestore billboard in Times Square was wasted money. It was small and hardly noticeable.

But Homestore outlasted many of the other dotcoms which did the same thing.

The 'irrational exhuberance' had taken hold of this company, as it did many others during the dot com days. Its sad that a few greedy bastards ruined it for so many employees and investors.

I imagine they'll rule that ignorance is not a defence. He'll do a year max, pay a small fine, and keep the millions he made selling the stock while the rest of the employees had to wait a year for just 20% of their options to vest. Watching all the insider trading as the stock topped $100 was nerve-racking. It was also depressing as it dropped quickly.

I was able to get a little bit.

Some of my old coworkers from homestore still joke that the best thing that they did for us was laying us off. It forced us to exercise our options before the stock tumbled.


Related: The Feds Visit Homestore's Founder