pump and dump

Morningstar has been mounting a persistent advertising campaign on LinkedIn recently. It it, it promotes its due diligence services. An announcement by the USA's Securities and Exchange Commission raises several questions, not the least of which is "who or what is Morningstar"?

As Elon Musk, the increasingly mad genius who's not exactly loved after a court accepted his ridiculous defence in the "pedo man" case and who's the poster-boy for how not to communicate about your company in social media puts his foot so far in his own mouth he could kick a football through his.. oh, never mind. He's done it again and tanked the value of Tesla. In doing so, he's lifted his profile enough for pump and dump artists to be using his interest in the current great scam, Artificial Intelligence, and the con artists who manipulate shares are all over his "Quantum AI."

If you were going to launch a pump and dump spam-scam masquerading as legitimate share picks from a regulated stockbroker, you'd want to make sure your mail was at least opened, wouldn't you? So you'd layer one trigger word after another until you found the target's sweet spot and, all the while, you would have to avoid those pesky spam-filters. So you'd use current buzzwords so that the victim dare not ban them for fear of missing out. Want to see how it's done? PS: watch out for suspicious action on the US shares mentioned.

With the superficial attitudes of commentators on all sides of the media divide pushing risk and compliance professionals in the direction of their fashion-driven topics, it's useful to remind readers that while they are focussed on the next big thing, past big things remain a threat. Pump and dump is an example of market manipulation and, of course, a predicate crime for money laundering or, even, funding future crime including, possible, terrorist activity. What is even more surprising is that the same names crop up repeatedly but they never go to jail.

Hello, old friend.

It's been a while.

David B. Stocker, a lawyer in Phoenix, Arizona, pleaded guilty on11 March 11, 2009, in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia., for his participation in a stock manipulation conspiracy known as a "pump-and-dump" scheme. On 12 March 2010 (yes, a year later) Stocker has been sentenced.