SEC has charged 8 social media influencers for their involvement in a $100m stock manipulation scheme on Discord and Twitter.
The individuals promoted themselves as successful traders and used their substantial social media following to manipulate exchange-traded stocks by posting price targets or indicating they were buying, holding or adding to their stock positions. When share prices and/or trading volumes rose in the promoted securities, the individuals regularly sold their shares without ever having disclosed their plans to dump the securities while they were promoting them.
The scheme resulted in fraudulent profits of approximately $100m. SEC has filed charges against each individual and also seeks a penny stock bar against one of them. Criminal charges have also been filed in a parallel action brought by the DOJ's Fraud Section and the US Attorney's Office.
For more details, please refer to the press release by SEC:
https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-221
