Defining A Sith Lord With Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne

Patrick Byrne, the president and CEO of Overstock.com, Inc.

, caused quite a stir with his use of the term, “Sith Lord” – a term that Star Wars has reserved for the most evil leaders in the galaxy. During a recent

with Benzinga, Byrne took the opportunity to clarify what he meant by his comment. “I think this all leads to Michael Milken,” he said. “What I [meant was], this network originated somewhere. I don't think it evolved like bacteria in a Petri dish. I think there was some organizing. “I'll put it this way: if you dig into them, and if you go onto

, you'll see dozens and dozens of pieces and analyses that trace these links, they all trace back to Steven Cohen of SAC Capital. And then, if you go back 10 or 15 years earlier to Michael Milken, and all [of his] cronies.” More specifically, Byrne said that when he made the Sith Lord comment, “What I said was – someday I may SAC up and tell the world who the mastermind was. And that was a way of getting across to the two of them who I was talking about. And since then, by the way, every day there's been people from SAC Capital reading Deep Capture, and also from Milken's office. We analyze the IPs and [they've] kept a very close eye on everything we've been digging up since then.” Byrne admits that this might sound a bit crazy. But he said your opinion will change the moment you start to look into some FBI cases. “[Google the term] ‘Operation Uptick,'” he recommends. “Operation Uptick was a case 10 years ago when the FBI swooped in. It was the biggest mob bust in US history, when they swooped in one day and arrested 120 people all over Wall Street and accused them of being tied into the Genovese family. So it isn't just us saying that organized crime has infiltrated [Wall Street].” “I think that there's a very blurry line between organized crime and the hedge fund community,” Byrne adds. To hear more from the Overstock.com CEO – including his thoughts on the Senate Banking Committee and the SEC – don't miss Benzinga's full interview with Patrick Byrne: