Feds Convict Stock Scammers, Overlook Spammers

[menotu]

Brian Krebs 13 December 2012 (krebsonsecurity)

On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it had obtained convictions against a cybercrime gang that committed securities fraud through the use of botnets and spam. Oddly enough, none of the botmasters or spammers who assisted in the scheme were brought to justice or identified beyond their hacker handles. This blog post may change that.

The defendants who pleaded or were found guilty in this case were convicted of orchestrating “pump-and-dump” stock scams. These are schemes in which fraudsters buy up low-priced stock, blast out millions of spam e-mails touting the stock as a hot buy and then dump their shares as soon as the share price ticks up from all of the spam respondents buying into the scam.

A press release from the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey noted that ringleader of the scam, 44-year-old Christopher Rad, of Cedar Park, Texas, communicated with the spammers via Skype, addressing them by their hacker aliases..............

press release

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/12/feds-convict-stock-scammers-overlook-spammers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+KrebsOnSecurity+%28Krebs+on+Security%29

[Yankee]

These are schemes in which fraudsters buy up low-priced stock, blast out millions of spam e-mails touting the stock as a hot buy and then dump their shares as soon as the share price ticks up from all of the spam respondents buying into the scam

I hope I bought DirecTV OK,  there's supposed to have more equipment dormant than
T-Mobile,  which AT&T never got.   T-Mobile is actually buying more smaller companies
instead of being bought by AT&T, the telephone monster.    What a mess to figure out.

My only advise - buy EPS when the market is down down.   Breakeven at least.   Short
term quickies are possible.

thx for the info

ff