Quote from: Theb on March 07, 2021, 09:10:34 PM

So what really got my attention is the authorities have considered pumping and dumping as fraud now. Pumping and dumping in itself isn't the fraud but the lies and deception the person is doing is what considered the fraud here. McAfee for example has a hidden agenda while he bought those crypto early he then Tweets misleading information and sometimes pure lies just to influence the market which he really do as he knows he has a large following in Twitter.

Yep, here's one general definition:

Quote from: https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/white-collar-crimes/fraud/

A deliberate scheme to obtain financial or similar gain by using false statements, misrepresentations, concealment of important information, or deceptive conduct is known as fraud.

That seems pretty spot on for what he did. Actually proving that on court is a wholly different story, but even if that doesn't stick, he has openly admitted to accepting money from ICOs (after the fact) in exchange for promoting them on twitter.

Quote from: zasad@ on March 07, 2021, 04:42:07 PM

Elon Musk is doing the same thing now. I am very interested in whether Elon Musk will be prosecuted for pumping dogecoins.

Elon's is a bit different. He just mentions Dogecoin and Bitcoin without really saying anything concrete. Even if we do assume that Elon makes money from this, he technically isn't deceiving anyone simply by memeing. Something tells me that he has done his homework on this and that we're in for a hell of a ride in the near future.

McAfee on the other hand, actively promotes the coins he's shilling for by saying they're the future, they have good potential, etc., which is clearly deceptive considering he was earning money from it behind the scenes.