DOJ and SEC charge social media influencers in alleged $100 million stock pump-and-dump scheme
Federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday charged seven social media influencers with using Twitter and Discord to commit securities fraud that netted them more than $100 million in illicit gains.
An eighth influencer was charged with aiding and abetting the alleged scheme in the SECs civil complaint and with conspiracy to commit securities fraud in the Department of Justices criminal case.
Federal prosecutors and the SEC charged eight social media influencers in an alleged conspiracy in which Twitter and Discord were used to commit securities fraud.
The separate criminal and civil complaints allege the defendants illicitly made more than $100 million.
The scheme involved hyping interest in certain securities in order to raise the value and later selling shares at artificially inflated prices, authorities said.
Each of the defendants had well over 100,000 Twitter followers as of this month.
https://ibb.co/qkdgqJs My friend followed a few of them sporadically and their Discord too and he said it always felt like they were transparent about the fact that they were penny pumpers and that you go in with them but when you get out is your responsibility. Their discord was full of trading books too, so a good source of knowledge. BUT what I'm guessing happened is what some of the other comments are alluding too: They may have had a calculated scheme to provide inflated price targets knowing full well that they'd be out long before the stocks hit those. What's sad is if they'd been a bit more modest in their operations they could have stayed on the right side of the law and still had a lifestyle better than 95% of the people in the US. I guess the momentum and temptation was too strong though. Anyways, they'll have their day in court and everyone deserves to defend themselves so we'll see how culpable they were once the dust settles.