Long article here, big speech from and SEC dude.
Message 14877169
In particular check out the following paragraph. Remind you of anyone?
Here’s what Lebed did. He purchased large blocks of thinly traded microcap stocks, often accompanying these trades with limit orders to sell. He then posted hundreds of identical messages, commonly known as "spam," to Yahoo! Finance message boards using multiple screen names. The messages typically touted the company by claiming, among other things, that the stock was about to "take-off," would be the next to gain 1,000%, and was "the most undervalued stock ever." In a number of postings, he made very specific price predictions, for instance, that the stock would go from $2 to $20, while at the same time placing limit sell orders at much lower prices. In at least one posting, he falsely claimed that the company was about to enter into a contract that would have generated large revenues. Lebed typically repeated the postings a second time early in the morning of the next day before going to school. In every instance, the price and volume of the stocks he touted increased, in some cases to 52-week-high levels. And he always sold out his positions at a profit, usually within 24 hours.
CMB |
