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SEC charges eight social media influencers in $100M stock manipulation scheme
- mc32 4y agoGood! About time people take responsibility for what they hawk.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoPump and dump is eternal. They just found a new way to do it.
- BoardsOfCanada 4y agoGood! Even though part of me thinks it's an Idiot tax...
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y agoI'm rarely a cheerleader for the SEC, but their work this week alone has been marvellous. Delighted to see these guys brought to book.
- devmunchies 4y agoThey jumped the gun on SBF. Should have let him testify in congress. The timing makes it look like they didn’t want him to talk. May not be the case but it’s what it looks like.
- amanj41 4y agoHave seen this conspiracy theory propounded by several people now. Two things: 1) SBF refused to testify right before he was due to anyways: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/12/former-ftx-ceo-sam-bankman-fried-refuses-to-testify-by-senate-banking-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/12/former-ftx-ceo-sam-bankman-f... 2) The charges he is looking at are so serious, I have a hard time believing it would matter that much whether he racked up one more charge of lying under oath Edit: formatting
- brandnewaccount 4y agoPlus, why let him "testify" and potentially spread misinformation, doing even more harm
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> makes it look like they didn’t want him to talk We know what he was going to say [1]. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclusive-transcript-the-full-testimony-sbf-planned-to-give-to-congress/?sh=531ba243c474 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclus...
- kahrl 4y agoBASELESS conspiracy theory.
- devmunchies 4y agoI didn't propose a conspiracy theory, just noticing suspicious, coincidental timing. Its was THE DAY BEFORE THE HEARING. A conspiracy theory would include why they wouldn't want him to talk (a la Esptein theories). And its literally not "baseless" if you ask if its coincidental that he was arrested the day before he was supposed to testify, why not let the hearing come and go and if he was a no show then arrest him? They are just questions. Regardless, SBF was charged for conspiracy, fraud, collusion, etc. Why are any questions that would throw suspicion on other parties to the conspiracy immediately shut down?
- prirun 4y agoMaybe they didn't want him to go in front of Congress because they were afraid Congress might grant him immunity. Given all the money he donated to both sides, it seems plausible to me.
- devmunchies 4y agoI believe congress can only make recommendations, they can't actually pass any judgement from a hearing.
- prirun 4y agoI looked this up before posting my comment. According to Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witness_immunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witness_immunity: "In the United States, Congress can also grant criminal immunity (at the Federal level) to witnesses in exchange for testifying.[1]"
- cuteboy19 4y agoThey can still make him do it now. Prison has zoom calls
- devmunchies 4y agonot the same dynamic. Now his guard is up and will probably plead the 5th and be behind a team of lawyers.
- fineIllregister 4y agoThe DOJ has a 95% conviction rate. SBF has confessed to illegal activity in his many interviews. His coworkers are believed to have cut deals. The new CEO is helping the feds, so they have expert testimony and access to all the material evidence. It is over for SBF (barring a miracle). They weren't going to get anything from his congressional testimony.
- AccountAccount1 4y agoThis is the list of people they've charged: - Perry Matlock @PJ_Matlock - Edward Constantin @MrZackMorris - Thomas Cooperman @ohheytommy - Gary Deel @notoriousalerts - Mitchell Hennessey @Hugh_Henne - Stefan Hrvatin @LadeBackk - John Rybarcyzk @Ultra_Calls - Daniel Knight (@DipDeity)
- anonporridge 4y agoIt's nice to see I don't know, much less follow, any of these people. Similar feeling to when SBF went bust. Even though I'm heavily involved in the bitcoin space, I barely knew anything about him other than vague praise of his effective altruism ideals and more pro-crypto/anti-bitcoin stance and that he ran a seedy, off shore exchange. Only afterwards did a lot of the people I actually do follow and respect resurface their old criticisms of SBF, e.g. Jack Mallers in June, https://twitter.com/jackmallers/status/1536834021354786823 https://twitter.com/jackmallers/status/1536834021354786823 It's nice to get some confirmation that the people I follow and give attention to are worthy of it. TBD if that continues.
- recuter 4y agoI didn't recognize a single one either. Quick random search returns "articles" like this: https://dailycaller.com/2021/07/30/the-success-story-of-atlas-trading-founder-pj-matlock/ https://dailycaller.com/2021/07/30/the-success-story-of-atla... Somehow it vaguely reminds me of old timey snake oil sales copy. Things never really change.
- elliekelly 4y agoTheir a/k/a names listed in the complaint were so cringe I can’t even imagine the type of person who would think these guys gave solid investment advice.
- jermaustin1 4y agoI followed Zack Morris, but I and everyone knew he was a pump and dump runner. His tagline was "The pump never dies" or something. I tried a handful of times to short his pumps right at the rug pull, but almost every single time, I lost my position due to a short squeeze. I ended up losing around $10k, had I been able to hold my positions (more cash in my margin account basically), they would be HUGE wins, because almost every stock he pumped went to near $0 within a few weeks/months. But the poor people who kept the squeezes alive lost so much more when the bottom fell out.
- woah 4y agoFinally, people are starting to realize that the "stock market" is a huge scam
- devmor 4y agoI don't think its fair to call the stock market a scam. I do think it's fair to say that a large part of how the stock market is used is in scams. Ideally, the stock market should be an open, visible and free agency for the population to invest in and gain returns from supporting publicly traded businesses. I just think it's far too unregulated (or perhaps, improperly regulated is the right term) to operate in that way.
- calibas 4y ago> Ideally, the stock market should be an open, visible and free agency for the population to invest in and gain returns from supporting publicly traded businesses. Now that trading is moving to "dark pools", things seem to be moving in the opposite direction.
- snapcaster 4y agoYou don't seem to understand what a "dark pool" is and I can't help but get the feeling your financial world model has been poisoned by supporters of very specific stocks. Please step out of whatever place you're learning this stuff from and expose yourself to alternative explanations for the things you're seeing
- calibas 4y agoPlease, give me your "alternative explanation" about how dark pools make stock trading more open and visible.
- snapcaster 4y agoSure, but first off I never claimed they "make stock trading more open and visible" that was you putting words in my mouth. That being said, it does make it much more accessible to retail investors. Trading stocks without fees and more or less instantly is impossible without dark pools. We could do away with dark pools entirely, but it would mean going back to paying $9.99 for trades or whatever but somehow I expect the same people crying about dark pools wouldn't like that either. Another aspect of dark pool hate is the idea that market impact can be reduced by selling through them as opposed to on market. If you're a speculator, this can be good or bad depending on the side of the trade you're on so probably evens out to a wash. If you're a long term investor, this is also a wash since you shouldn't be concerned about short term volatility (or lack thereof) of your investment. What exactly do you take issue with when it comes to dark pools? what problems do you think they're causing that outweigh the very real benefits to market participants I listed?
- satellites 4y agoI'm a noob when it comes to stock trading rules, but can someone explain how this is different than what Jim Cramer does on his show? Cramer has been exposed for knowingly giving people bad stock trading advice. Is it just that Cramer didn't do a blatantly obvious pump-and-dump like these influencers did?
- dclusin 4y agoJim is most likely not trading the securities directly. The money he makes is from his tv contracts and other non-securities trading business probably. Maybe being paid by the companies to shill for them.
- pmart123 4y agoA lot comes down to subtle language syntax. For instance, you can say "we target 12% returns," but you can't say "we guarantee 12% returns." You can say "we out-performed the market by over 3% a year for each of the past ten years," but you can't say "we're going to out-perform the market because we have the past ten years." You can say "company X is a great business, and the stock looks cheap here," but you can't say "company X is a can't miss investment and an automatic double at this price."
- pmart123 4y agoYou also can't promote a stock or position and do the opposite. For instance, if you ran a popular YouTube channel, you can't buy stock X before you post about why you own it, then post the promotional piece, and sell your position into your listener's buying it. If you are paid by the company, you would have to disclose this too, etc.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoNow hopefully they'll also go after crypto influencers. Unreal the amount of scams and rugs and fraud committed by people with any semblance of influence in crypto.
- kramerger 4y agoHow about going after the dogecoin pump and dump guy next?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- woeirua 4y agoThe SEC has no teeth until they go after Elon. When are they going to take him to task for making materially false statements regarding Telsa's FSD ambitions?
- brookst 4y agoIt’s a big organization. They can do more than one thing at a time. Let’s not play at binary thinking.
- tick_tock_tick 4y ago> materially false statements Give us a real example of something you think he said is illegal; being wrong or optimistic isn't illegal.
- exogeny 4y agoInfluencers are not your friends. Again: influencers are not your friends.
- mattigames 4y agoThey should have sticked with the Gwyneth Paltrow of scamming people, sell trash that you can convince people to buy at the price of gold (and due audience size alone it's likely enough people will fall for it)
- p0pcult 4y agoWell, fuck. First it was Crypto--now we need to ban all stocks. Where is Molly White when we need her?
- encryptluks2 4y agoNow do Musk next!
- jaimehrubiks 4y agoWhen Elon Musk? (Serious question)
- astura 4y ago4 years ago https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226 https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226
- jshaqaw 4y agoLook these guys are clearly scumbags but anyone who reads anonymous twitter posts and invests on that basis without assuming everything is a pump and dump is going to lose all their money one way or another. I would guess that at least 95 percent of trades based on this crew knew full well this was a momentum pump and dump club and just hoped to ride the wave and get out before the suckers. Not tremendous pity for their losses.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- neilv 4y ago> I would guess that at least 95 percent of trades based on this crew knew full well this was a momentum pump and dump club and just hoped to ride the wave and get out before the suckers. So also send the message that people who coattail on a scheme like that will also face charges?
- tootie 4y agoEver heard of /r/wallstreetbets? People are getting eaten alive there.
- suitsthem 4y ago
- STRiDEX 4y agoI'm interested in if putting a disclaimer in your twitter bio will be used in court. "DISCLAIMER: My tweets are NOT recommendations to enter a stock. - Ideas shared on Twitter are NOT buy or sell signals. DO NOT TRADE BASED ON SOCIAL MEDIA." This disclaimer was in @Ultra_Calls description
- IshKebab 4y agoThat kind of thing generally doesn't work as far as I know. You can't just say you're not doing something to cancel out the fact that you are doing it.
- jsemrau 4y agoClearly shows that every social platform that was launched with good intentions can be abused by snake-oil salesmen to promote their products. What would it take to weed this out? 1. Confirm holdings before posting. 2. Display holdings at time of posting to other users. 3. Defined area of expertise (not everyone is an expert in everything) - Always a nice warning sign if people are commenting on stocks all across industries. 4. Peer-reviewed posts. Posts only go live if other experts agree to it. 5. Reduced content velocity - Platforms like Twitter, Stocktwits, Commonstock promote this kind of behaviour by allowing a mix between opinion and insight.
- snapcaster 4y agoI don't think any of that would work. I'm not letting the criminals off the hook but we have to acknowledge that the people who are taking stock pick advice from "The Stock Sniper" on twitter are greedy morons. They aren't reading financial statements let alone some kind of peer-reviewed research. In fact, Bed Bath and Beyond stock cultists got confirmed (by SEC filings) dumped on by Ryan Cohen and they're still claiming he's somehow long on the company's future
- jsemrau 4y agoEveryone in that industry is greedy. That's why everyone is there, I suppose. The whole purpose is to make money. And the only way to make money is to take it away from someone who had the contrarian opinion. These people they prayed on were the uninformed and lazy. It's comparable to Sequoia investing in FTX. They just assumed that someone else had done their research before and went along for the ride. Now they wrote an apology note to their LPs. : https://twitter.com/sequoia/status/1590522718650499073 https://twitter.com/sequoia/status/1590522718650499073 How can a retail investor distinguish a good apple from a bad one? At least for "Zach Morris" he seemed successful with that scheme - https://twitter.com/margot_rubin/status/1603079409195425793/photo/1 https://twitter.com/margot_rubin/status/1603079409195425793/... At least to the extent that he got 10 properties to collect. So by that notion he is not "just some rando on Twitter". Finally. Both links I have provided were also posted on social media. The problem is that it is not easy to distinguish who is full of it and who is credible.