Investing
The SEC took legal action against eight individuals involved in a $100 million fraud scheme, the agency said in a press release published today. The regulator said the defendants defrauded hundreds of thousands of investors by promoting and manipulating the share prices of several small-cap stocks.
SEC Sues Eight Influencers for Defrauding Investors on Discord and Twitter
In a press release Wednesday, the securities regulator said it filed charges against eight individuals for their involvement in a $100 million securities fraud scheme. SEC said the defendants defrauded investors by promoting and manipulating the prices of a group of stocks on social media platforms Twitter and Discord.
According to the press release, seven named defendants touted themselves as expert stock traders and accumulated hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter and Discord since 2020. The individuals allegedly invested in certain public stocks and encouraged their followers to buy the same securities.
But according to the complaint, the defendants offloaded their stock holdings when the securities’ prices rose without ever notifying their followers about plans to sell. The SEC alleges that the defendants “took advantage of their followers by repeatedly feeding them a steady diet of misinformation, which resulted in fraudulent profits of approximately $100…
