If Ellison-Jobs blackmail stories are too overt for the true conspiracy theory connoisseurs out there, we've got a few events that some of you may want to string together into a far more subtle scenario. Quick, whenever there's an evil scheme being hatched by an unknown mastermind, who does it always turn out to be? That's right, the quiet guy whom nobody ever suspected. (See, your mom was wrong-- watching all that Scooby-Doo did amount to something.) At the same time, a full 84% of the diabolical plans that actually succeed are hatched by evil scientists. (Bear with us, we're going somewhere with this.)

Okay, rewind for a second. July 19th, 2000: Steve Jobs introduces the latest addition to Apple's innovative hardware line-up, the Power Mac G4 Cube. And what ushers in Apple's official entry into the Cube Era? A promotional video featuring various brainy and/or creative types touting the wonders of the Cube. Among said brainy types is a meek, innocent-looking scientist by the name of Arthur D. Levinson, Ph.D. At the time, none of us knew who he was; he was just a random science dude calling the Cube "a very important product for Apple and for users... it just kept getting better and better." So the first time we see this guy, he's setting up the Cube to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, Apple will sell a kajillion of them, etc.

Fast-forward to August 15th: Apple issues a press release welcoming the latest addition to its board of directors: one Arthur D. Levinson, Ph.D. Those of us who eventually connected Apple's newest board member with the Cube-happy guy in the Expo video tucked that interesting little fact away for future reference. And it's a good thing we did, because now let's jet forward to September 28th, otherwise known as "Black Thursday." That was the day that Apple predicted lower-than-expected earnings (due largely to slow Cube sales), resulting in a stock price drop of 50% overnight. The price kept dropping, but not long after Apple's actual reported earnings results on October 18th, AAPL finally bottomed out in the $18-20 range.

Okay, that's the setup, and here's the punchline: according to MacCentral, Art Levinson sunk about a million and a half dollars into Apple stock over the course of October 23rd through the 25th for an average price of about $19 a share, not much more than AAPL's 52-week low. We'll leave you guys to fill in the details, but here we have a guy who starts by helping to set overly-high expectations for Cube sales, then joins Apple's board, and then waits to buy a huge chunk of stock until right after the real Cube sales numbers drop AAPL's price to bargain-basement levels. Coincidence? Ha! We can't wait to hear him say, "I'd have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids!"