The cat's out of the bag ... this was part of our 2011 April Fool's Day joke. Fool on!
ALEXANDRIA, VA -- Case Dynamics LLC, an open-source software development company in Tucson, has uncovered a bug in the ZippyTrade 2000™ consumer trading platform. The error has been brought to the attention of The Motley Fool, but the company's chief developer, Chris Eldredge, says he will not comment until 4 p.m. EST today.
Product testers at Case Dynamics say they stumbled upon the glitch when executing hypertrades on the platform at noon today. The company's CEO, Marvin Lederman, believes the flaw is intentional.
"For legal reasons, I'm not going to say that The Motley Fool has embedded code to lift money directly from their customer's accounts. But I think they have," said Lederman. "If our analysis is right, this is dirty, dirty business."
Traders at the online site Flipper's Nook (www.flippersnook.com) have also referenced the bug, which appears to lift 5%-7% of the money placed in customer accounts, redirecting it to areas in the software coding labeled "NowBonus.exe" and "FloatFinderSlushy.edu". The problem appears to occur randomly, but frequently, though it only affects Internet and facsimile users of ZippyTrade 2000™.
Said Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner, outside of The Motley Fool media luncheon, "We apologize if there is a glitch in there, though I can assure you that we've been very deliberate and intentional in all our work. Our Zippy Platform is completely safe, until proven otherwise. Our software engineers are vigilant. Our internal controls are strict. We promise to return all the cash to users within 60 to 90 days along with a complimentary belled cap, which retails at $9.99."
The Motley Fool, long revered as a beacon of transparency and accountability, is coming under fire today following the Wikileaks release of more than 2,000 documents confidential to the company. Believing the message could be spun out of control by the people who are out to get them, the company is holding live conferences and online discussions throughout the day.
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