Rapid subscriber growth is what has propelled LNKD higher, but the means by which the company achieved this growth have come under question with a lawsuit that says the firm hacked customers’ e-mail accounts to steal names and addresses. If so, such tactics would be similar to those of Equity Funding Corp., an insurance company that collapsed in 1973 after it was revealed that many of its customers were fictitious. It will be interesting to see how long Wall Street can resist the stench here, since the stock has more than doubled this year and is a favorite of portfolio managers. It looks ripe for shorting in any case, and so I’ll recommend buying eight November 200-190 put spreads for 1.10 or better. This order will be do-able only if the DaBoyz are brazen enough to try and open LNKD higher, presumably as a last-ditch attempt to distribute the stock. If that’s not the case, we’ll readjust our sights and figure out another way to get on board. ______ UPDATE (September 24): Yesterday’s downdraft pushed the put spread out of reach, but I’ll suggest keeping the 1.10 bid in anyway because the stock didn’t get pounded nearly as badly as it would have if investors were concerned about scandal. We’ll need a rally of perhaps $5-6 to get filled, but my guess is that it will happen when the Nasdaq high-fliers turn around once DaBoyz have accumulated their fill. _______ UPDATE (September 25, 9:24 a.m.):  The so-far $17 bounce this week is quite a bit more powerful than I had expected and implies not only that DaBoyz do not care about the apparently devious way in which LNKD has propagated itself, but that they intend to take the stock higher.  Since we cannot know when the scandal will precipitate out — and it eventually will — we’ll cap our theoretical loss at $120 with a 0.95 limit stop on the position if the underlying stock trades above 252.30.