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CHAPTER 1 - MORNING APRIL FOOLS DAY 2003, episode 1
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HACKOFF.COM CEO LARRY LAZARD DEAD OF GUNSHOT WOUND
BOARD APPOINTS CFO DONNA LANGHORNE AS CEO;
JOSEPH WINDAW AS CHAIRMAN
New York, NY -- April 1, 2003 – (BUSINESS WIRE) hackoff.com (NASDAQ:HOFC) announced today that the company’s Chairman and CEO, Larry Lazard, was found dead in his corporate office of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. The Board of Directors has selected the company’s CFO, Donna Langhorne, as his successor. Controller Lew Marigold will serve as acting CFO replacing Ms. Langhorne.
Joseph Windaw, the managing partner of Windaw and Wallar Venture Capital, has been selected to succeed Mr. Lazard as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Mr. Windaw has been a Board Member of hackoff.com since 1997 and was previously Vice Chairman of the Board.
The New York City Police Department is conducting an investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Lazard’s death.
The company notified NASDAQ and the SEC of this event prior to the opening of the New York securities markets and requested a temporary halt in trading of the company’s stock. Trading is expected to resume shortly after the dissemination of this announcement.
Ms. Langhorne is a 1985 graduate of Princeton University and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School awarded in 1991. She was a partner in Ernst & Young prior to joining hackoff.com as its CFO in 1997.
“We will all miss Larry terribly,” said Langhorne. “He was the founder and guiding genius of the company. However, our customers can be assured that Larry leaves behind him a seasoned management team ready and able to continue the critical anti-hacker support we have always given them.”
Media Contact:
Eve Gross
Chief Marketing Officer
212 555 1000
eveg@hackoff.com
about hackoff.com:hackoff.com is the leading provider of hacker protection to e-commerce websites worldwide. Since the founding of the company, it has licensed its patented and patent-pending hackaway® software to over 10,000 sites. These sites display hackoff.com’s trademarked hackmenot® logo.
The company also offers Managed Hackaway Service as active protection against hacker attacks.
More information about the company is available at http://www.hackoff.com/corp.
Forward-looking statements:Hackoff.com has included in this press release certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" consist of all non-historical information, and the analysis of historical information, including any references to future revenue growth, future expense growth, future credit exposure, future profitability, anticipated cash resources, anticipated capital expenditures, capital requirements, and the Company's plans for future periods. In addition, the words "could", "expects", "anticipates", "may depend", "estimates", "projects" and similar words and phrases are also intended to identify such forward-looking statements.
All such forward-looking statements are current only as of the date on which such statements were made. Hackoff.com does not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which any such statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.
Actual results could differ materially from those projected in hackoff.com’s forward-looking statements due to numerous known and unknown risks and uncertainties. These include without limitation the results of the ongoing investigation into the sudden death of our late Chairman and CEO; the volatile software market; changes in domestic and international economic, market, and regulatory conditions; the inherent uncertainty of financial projections; unanticipated technological developments, including the possibility that hackoff.com’s technology will be defeated; hackoff's failure to access sufficient capital; the creditworthiness of hackoff.com’s customers; and other considerations described as “Risk Factors” in Exhibit 99.1 to hackoff.com’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2002 and in other filings made by us with the SEC.
###
The Chat Board
Oh-Ohby: thewatcher02 (38/M/New Rochelle, NY) 04/01/03 9:40 am
Msg: 99020 of 99034
hackoff’s not trading!
Re: Oh-Oh
by: ChorusLine (25/F/Paramus, NJ)
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy 04/01/03 9:41 am
Msg: 99021 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99020 by thewatcher02
Got to be an april fools joke:-}
Re: Oh-Oh
by: pooper
Long-Term Sentiment: Sell 04/01/03 9:43 am
Msg: 99022 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99021 by ChorusLine
The real April Fool’s joke is George Bush
Re: Press Advisory Out
by: Jumbo10 (46/M/New York, NY)
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy 04/01/03 9:45 am
Msg: 99023 of 99034
There is a press advisory out for an announcement expected at 10AM explaining the halt in trading. Whatever it is, you can bet it’ll be good for the crooks on wall street and bad for everyone stupid enough to be holding the stock.
Re: Oh-Oh
by: scooper
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy 04/01/03 9:48 am
Msg: 99024 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99022 by pooper
pooper, your just as much an asshole as your buddy clinton and this is not a political board
Re: Press Advisory Out
by: Alaska60-60
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell 04/01/03 9:52 am
Msg: 99025 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99023 by jumbo10
I’ve been telling you idiots allalong that lizard would have to sell jerkoff to antihack. he probly just didn’t get his own parachute big enuf b4 but I heard from insider that the deal is definitly on now. of coarse they stopped trading so only insiders can benfit but thats how lizards are
Re: Press Advisory Out
by: scooper
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy 04/01/03 9:56 am
Msg: 99026 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99025 by Alaska60-60
alaska, your as much an asshole as your friend pooper and this is not the antihack board. why dont you stay there where you belong so you can pump and dump that and not bother us here on this board
Press Release Out
by: Alaska60-60
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell 04/01/03 10:01 am
Msg: 99027 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99025 by Alaska60-60
The press release is on Yahoo. The lizard is out and the cunt is in… this stock is in the crapper if it ever starts trading again
Re: Press Advisory Out
by: Jumbo10 (46/M/New York, NY)
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy 04/01/03 10:05 am
Msg: 99028 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99023 by jumbo10
This may not be bad for the stock. I’ve changed my sentiment to buy and will buy after it settles down after trading resumes. Donna may be smarter than Larry was about selling the company or making it profitable. She always did a better job than he did at the quarterly webcasts. Often regime change makes a company go up even when it is unexpected.
Re: Press Advisory Out
by: PacPhil (25/M/New York, NY)
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy 04/01/03 10:07 am
Msg: 99029 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99028 by jumbo10
Jumbo, you always have good analysis. I hope you’ll write more later in the day. Why do you think Larry shot himself? Does that matter to the stock? Is the new CFO any good? What will The Street think?
Re: Press Advisory Out
by: Alaska60-60
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Sell 04/01/03 10:10 am
Msg: 99030 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99028 by jumbo10
Your an idiot or just getting reddy to dump your stock. The cunt cant run the company. the lizard couldnt run the company. The company sucks. it doesn’t have anything. They should have sold to antihack… now noone will pay a penny for this piece of shit
Whats Happening
by: CLess 04/01/03 10:15 am
Msg: 99031 of 99034
Does anyone know why the stock isn’t trading???
Donna
by: TestTost (35/M/San Francisco, CA)
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 04/01/03 10:15 am
Msg: 99032 of 99034
Donna’s a peace of ass. She was in the SI Swimsuit addition in the early 90s. She’s still hot.
Re: Oh-Oh
by: ChorusLine (25/F/Paramus, NJ)
Long-Term Sentiment: Buy 04/01/03 10:16 am
Msg: 99033 of 99034
Posted as a reply to: Msg 99021 by ChorusLine
It wasn’t an april fools joke. what will the street think?
Stock Opened
by: thewatcher02 (38/M/New Rochelle, NY) 04/01/03 10:16 am
Msg: 99034 of 99034
hackoff’s trading again! 1k shares at 1.26 unchanged. bid 1.24; ask 1.26.
###
Obituary, New York Times
Lawrance Lazard , 40, Founder of hackoff.com, Dies
By Roger Ryan
Published: April 2, 2003. Lawrance Lazard, the founder and CEO of the Internet company hackoff.com, died on Tuesday at his company office at 65 Broad Street in lower Manhattan He was 40. According to a company spokeswoman, the cause was a single gun shot wound to the head, apparently self-inflicted. Mr. Lazard was believed to have been in good health.
Lawrance Roger Lazard was born January 31, 1963, in Hicksville, New York, to Roger Lawrance Lazard and Cindy Moonstock Lazard.
Mr. Lazard was a well-known and controversial figure in New York’s Silicon Alley in the halcyon days of the Internet bubble. He founded hackoff.com in 1996 as a successor to an earlier consulting business, and was chief executive officer of hackoff.com from its inception. The company’s IPO occurred in 1999, and its stock soared to twice the offering price on the first day of trading. Mr. Lazard and his wife, Louise, were paper billionaires until the collapse of the stock market bubble.
The controversy over Mr. Lazard was the result of his “Gotcha” attack on the credit card files of a number of major banks. He confessed to this computer-based crime in 1993 and served six months of a nine month sentence in a federal penitentiary for white collar criminals. At the time, Judge Raymond Martin explained that he imposed this relatively light sentence since “Gotcha” was not intended to do harm and, in fact, beneficially exposed the weaknesses of financial systems before they could be maliciously exploited.
At the time he staged the “Gotcha” attack, Mr. Lazard was employed as a software engineering supervisor at Chase Manhattan Bank, which he joined upon receiving his MBA. In his confession to the “Gotcha” attack, he admitted to being influenced by the notorious Captain Crunch, a fabled Silicon Valley hacker who developed a device for defrauding telephone companies by mimicking the signaling tones than used for switching calls.
Mr. Lazard’s criminal background made the hackoff.com IPO an object of controversy. Detractors said that an ex-convict was not fit to serve as CEO of a public company. Defenders argued that no one was harmed by Lazard’s actions since he neither sold the credit card numbers he downloaded, nor used them for any personal gain. Both sides agreed that hackoff.com’s success in protecting Internet sites from malicious hacking was due to Mr. Lazard’s demonstrated expertise.
Mr. Lazard was a survivor of the 9/11/2001 attacks on the World Trade Center from which he escaped down a stairwell prior to the collapse of the South Tower.
Mr. Lazard grew up on Long Island where his father was a successful chiropractor. Lazard showed a strong and early interest in technology, receiving his first computer — an Apple II — at the age of fourteen. Apple founder Steve Jobs became one of his heroes. Mr. Lazard received his undergraduate degree in Drama from Harvard College in 1985 and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1991.
Lawrance Lazard is survived by his wife and his mother, who now resides in Arizona.
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Comments
Today is an historic day. Publishing Executives: Enjoy your final, restive Saturday night partying. Turn up the music, raise your glasses and sleep well. The weather tomorrow (here in the East) is supoposed to be lovely tomorrow - play some football with your kids, go to the beach or hit the linx; for Monday morning, your worlds will come crashing down onto your heads. The Blook has arrived and it's being delivered by...Tom Evslin. Never heard the name? Maybe you ought to ask your friends in the Telecom industry who he is. Nope - he didn't stay retired for very long. Too many complacent industires out there that need to be dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming. Unfortunatley folks, this time he's come for you!!!
Posted by: Marc | September 17, 2005 08:18 PM
Great idea, stupid name. Blook? Ugh.
Posted by: Michael Martine | September 18, 2005 08:47 AM
Terrific beginning Tom. I love the media mix - press release, stock charts, chat log. This is going to be great fun to watch (and participate in). And the guy above who spells his name correctly is right. A huge crack just appeared in the walls of the publishing empire.
Posted by: Marc Orchant | September 18, 2005 10:14 AM
spelling police!
"...a fabled Silicon Valley hacker who developed a device for defrauding telephone companies by mimicking the signaling tones THAN used for switching calls."
it's in one of the last paragraphs of the obituary :)
Posted by: Hans Van Deun | September 18, 2005 01:23 PM
Harvard College does not offer an undergraduate concentration in Drama.
Posted by: Abby Vigneron | September 18, 2005 11:02 PM
Tom - I love reading your blog, and I have eagerly anticipated your blook. Having the live Hackoff website is genius. I am looking forward to reading along as the story unfolds.
Posted by: Erica Brescia | September 19, 2005 10:36 AM
I'm with Erica: the faux Hackoff company website is brilliant! I love the story so far, and can't wait to read more! Congrats
Posted by: Elizabeth Gimpel | October 1, 2005 07:04 PM
Sure. What's the question?
Posted by: Tom Evslin | November 13, 2005 02:38 PM