investigative reporting
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, racial injustice, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend m ...
website, created to investigate and report on instances of alleged
securities fraud
Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a deceptive practice in the stock or commodities markets that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information. It was founded in July 2006 by American businessman
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American businessman and television personality. He is the former principal owner and current minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and co-owner of 2929 Entertain ...
and business reporter Chris Carey, formerly of the ''
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' is a regional newspaper based in St. Louis, Missouri, serving the St. Louis metropolitan area. It is the largest daily newspaper in the metropolitan area by circulation, surpassing the '' Belleville News-Democra ...
''.
History
In early 2006, Carey approached Cuban with the idea of launching an investigative organization focusing on corporate fraud. Cuban was receptive to the idea, and offered to finance the venture. Within its first year, Sharesleuth articles on the publicly traded companies Xethanol and UTEK were followed by drops of over 35% in the stock price of each company. Sharesleuth has since reported on many other companies, including
Kandi Technologies
Kandi Technology Group, Inc. (Simplified Chinese characters, Chinese: 康迪) is a Chinese manufacturer of Electric vehicle battery, batteries and electric vehicles. The company is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol KNDI. ...
and Highland Mint, a firm that manufactured the coins used in the
Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the annual History of the NFL championship, league championship game of the National Football League (NFL) of the United States. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966 NFL season, 1966 (with the excep ...
pre-game coin toss.
As a means of funding the site, Cuban typically
shorts
Shorts are a garment worn over the pelvic area, circling the waist and splitting to cover the upper part of the legs, sometimes extending down to the knees but not covering the entire length of the leg. They are called "shorts" because they ar ...
the stocks of the article subjects prior to publication, a practice which has drawn controversy. He has stated that the site has published articles on "literally anything that I have shorted".
Related sites
In October 2008, Cuban and Carey started a companion website, BailoutSleuth, for the purpose of tracking
Troubled Asset Relief Program
The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is a program of the United States government to purchase toxic assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector that was passed by Congress and signed into law by U.S. Presi ...
funds and bank activity in the wake of the
2008 financial crisis
The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...
and resulting bank bailouts.
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
-winning journalists
Gary Cohn
Gary David Cohn (born August 27, 1960) is an American businessman and philanthropist who served as the 11th director of the National Economic Council and chief economic advisor to President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2018. He managed the administ ...
of ''
The Baltimore Sun
''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local, regional, national, and international news.
Founded in 1837, the newspaper was owned by Tribune Publi ...
'' and
Russell Carollo
Russell John Carollo (March 16, 1955 – December 19, 2018) was an American Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, who worked as an investigative reporter for numerous publications, including the ''Dayton Daily News'', the ''Los Angeles Times'' ...
of the ''
Dayton Daily News
The ''Dayton Daily News'' (''DDN'') is a daily newspaper published in Dayton, Ohio. It is owned by Cox Enterprises, Inc., a privately held global conglomerate headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, with approximately 55,000 employee ...
'' were hired in 2009–2010, the latter to handle
Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request:
* Freedom of Information Act (United States) of 1966
* F ...
requests. Unlike the for-profit Sharesleuth, BailoutSleuth was conceived as a nonprofit service. The site is no longer online.
In mid-2010 Cuban and Carey created another nonprofit website, JunketSleuth.com, to provide access to government travel spending records. As with Sharesleuth, Cuban provided the funding and Carey served as the investigative reporter. The site has since closed.