Last week, Forbes revealed that de facto Oklahoma State University President and Athletic Director T. Boone Pickens was suing his son for cyberbullying, cyberstalking, defamation, extortion and libel. That's quite a list of civil charges, and makes you wonder what exactly his son did to warrant such legal wrath. Did he make claims that windmills are actually gigantic dildo factories? Did he accuse his dad of being David Boren's fishing buddy?? Did he create a Facebook photo album named "Pics of my father picken' his nose"???
No, he did none of those things. He basically just accused T. Boone and his family of being modern day Lannisters:
Via Forbes:
In October 2012, Michael Pickens, son of famed corporate raider and oilman T. Boone Pickens, started a blog. He called it “5 Days In Connecticut.” The first few posts were personal, but innocent enough, focusing on his recovery from drug addiction. Slowly, though, the blog began to morph into something much uglier; the result, says Michael’s family, of a heated Thanksgiving dinner. To date, he has written that his chemical addiction was the result of abuse at the hands of his father; that his sister and brother had stolen money from their mother; that his siblings are also drug addicts; that his father had purposefully sabotaged a son-in-law’s business. He began tweeting and emailing links to the blog to his family, their friends and their business acquaintances. Later the tweets reached public officials, business leaders and major news outlets.
Now Boone, along with three of his children, is suing 58-year-old Michael in Dallas County Court, alleging cyberbullying and cyberstalking. The family has leveled five counts against him: invasion of privacy, defamation, libel, harmful access by computer, and extortion.
So who is this Michael Pickens? Here's a pick of him from his Twitter account.
I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but doesn't that guy look a little bit off? The 1990s glasses, the stretched face, the hair over the ears... he looks about as reliable as Downtown's trolley service. He's even wearing an OSU hat. That should be a giveaway that the guy is up to no good.
But don't take our word for it.
More from Forbes:
FORBES’ reporting dug up a few problems with Michael’s story. Even Michael’s 31-year-old son Michael Jr. (who is not involved in the case), wrote to warn me that his father’s blog was “highly erroneous.”
“I love my father dearly, and I know he loves me,” Michael Jr. said in a phone call. “But this blog stuff is out of control, it’s not accurate in the least.”
Michael Jr. further corroborated claims that his father attempted to extort Boone and said that his father’s allegations that Pam, Tom and Elizabeth were on the dole were “not true.”...
This is not the first time Michael has been accused of misconduct. In 2007, he was sentenced to five years probation after pushing penny stocks in 2004. Prosecutors said he sent hundreds of thousands of hoax faxes meant for a fictitious “Dr. Mitchel” to investors around the United States. The SEC said he made more than $300,000 selling holdings in three stocks as their value soared on massive volume. He puts the figure at $386,000. “I got like $90,000 out of it,” Michael says, “the rest went to the people I was paying to fax, and the guy off shore was taking a cut of it too.”
Boone paid the restitution Michael owed, some $1.2 million, and also paid for him to go into drug rehabilitation at Alina Lodge, an institution that Michael regards very highly in his blog. “Because of Mike’s courageous efforts in treatment and because I wanted to clear our family’s name by making the victims whole, I have made full restitution on behalf of Mike,” Boone said at the time. “I am thankful that it has forced Mike to truly confront his demons for the first time in his life.” Court documents submitted by the family’s attorney describe Boone’s role following the scandal as “herculean.”
Discussions with Michael Hornstein and Don Yurga, executive director and business manager of the treatment center, Alina Lodge, largely back Boone.
“Every penny of Michael’s treatment was paid for by Boone,” says Hornstein. “He was a very active participant in his son’s treatment and rehabilitation.”
Hornstein and Yurga say that Boone was so pleased with Michael’s recovery at Alina that he hosted a dinner in Dallas for Alina where Michael was the featured speaker. Yurga describes Boone as a “doting father.”
I'm not a big T. Boone Pickens fan. I don't buy the revisionist history pushed on us by the local media and energy industry that he's some misconstrued businessman that we should all admire and respect. The guy is a greedy corporate raider, greenmailer and narcissist. You know how 50% of all kids movies have that shady businessman who wants to destroy the baseball field to make way for a parking lot? Well, 100% of the bad screenwriters who write those movies model that businessman after T. Boone Pickens.
Despite his shady past, I'm still going to take the word of T. Boone Pickens over some ex-con man drug addict. And yes, I'm writing most of that in hopes that T. Boone will send me a random check for one million dollars. I much rather pander a billionaire for money than try extort or cyberbully them. Lawsuits can get expensive. Kissing ass is the way to go.
