For years, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne has maintained a loony crusade against Wall Street traders, claiming there was a conspiracy to sell his company's stock short. (He may well have been onto something — but then again, a stopped clock is right twice a day.) CIO reveals a far more serious problem affecting Overstock's financials: A botched installation of Oracle software which has led to the restatement of five years' worth of earnings. In 2005, Byrne apologized to shareholders for a $14.2 million quarterly loss related to the troubled installation. Today's restatement suggests he was too busy chasing naked shorts to actually fix the problem. Why didn't he just blame it on the software all along?

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