Federal prosecutors and the SEC recently charged seven Influencers with using Twitter, Discord and YouTube to commit securities fraud that netted them more than $100 million.
An eighth influencer was charged with aiding and abetting the alleged scheme in the SEC’s civil complaint and with conspiracy to commit securities fraud in the Department of Justice’s criminal case.
Each of the defendants had well over 100,000 Twitter followers as of this month, they ran a podcast called "Pennies: Going In Raw" and a YouTube channel called "Goblin Gang".
"Pump and dump" schemes have two parts. In the first, promoters try to boost the price of a stock with false or misleading statements about the company. Once the stock price has been pumped up, fraudsters move on to the second part, where they seek to profit by selling their own holdings of the stock, dumping shares into the market.
These schemes often occur on the Internet where it is common to see messages urging readers to buy a stock quickly. Often, the promoters will claim to have "inside" information about a development that will be positive for the stock. After these fraudsters dump their shares and stop hyping the stock, the price typically falls, and investors lose their money.
