Stock scam spam duo sued
Pump-and-dump couple face fines, as do many others worldwide.
A Connecticut couple have been indicted over claims they used a spam campaign to artificially inflate stock prices. In a fairly typical example of the pump-and-dump scam, the pair allegedly bought a swathe of cheap stocks in a small startup company, spread rumours of major deals using a spam campaign, then cashed in to the tune of $1 million when the stock prices shot up.
"This is sad evidence that people are still being tricked out of their cash by spammers," said John Hawes, Technical Consultant at Virus Bulletin. "Surely people realise that an email from a total stranger, offering them fool-proof ways of making fast and easy money, is almost certainly a scam?"
As the pump-and-dump scam falls into a legally grey area, and is generally thought to be unethical rather than actually illegal, it seems likely the case will be settled out of court.
Elsewhere in the fight against spam, two US men, accused of sending up to a million spam mails in a single day, face up
to 3 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 after being charged under spam laws by a federal grand jury in San
Diego - see the US Attorney's Office press release in PDF format
here (or
here in HTML, accompanied by ads for bulk
mail tools). Further afield, a Chinese company has been fined 5,000 yuan ($625) for sending bulk mails, in a landmark case for the country, while in Romania police report rounding up a sizeable and 'sophisticated' phishing ring, making 23 arrests, with suspects facing up to 15 years imprisonment.
22 August 2006
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