Stock Buying Advice Scam

How the scam works:

(with video below) Similar to the Wrong Number Voicemail Scam, this fraudulent activity comes your way advising on buying stocks from a certain company. The email claims to come from an acquintance who mistakenly sent the message to the wrong person. Lucky you, it's in your inbox now.

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After trying to get the recipient's trust by using phrases such as “we have to talk about this in person” or “timing is impeccable”, the scammer proceeds to give the name of the 'wonder' company right before the end of the messagge.

Below is an actual email our Scam Detector team received recently. Be aware that soon it might come in your inbox, too. It looks like this:

These emails are sent to thousands of people at once, via mail merge. The name (Beth Ross) could be a different one. As a matter a fact, we received the same email 24 hours later, from somebody called 'Angelia Clayton'. This time, the subject title was “Sorry for my late reply”. In the first example, the subject was “Do you still want this?”

If you never heard of it, this is what is known as “Pump and dump” (P&D) technique, which is a form of microcap stock fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements, in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price. Once the operators of the scheme “dump” their overvalued shares, the price falls and investors lose their money. Stocks that are the subject of pump and dump schemes are sometimes called “chop stocks”.

If a promoter's campaign to “pump” a stock is successful, it will entice unwitting investors to purchase shares of the target company. The increased demand, price, and trading volume of the stock may convince more people to believe the hype, and to buy shares as well. When the promoters behind the scheme sell (dump) their shares and stop promoting the stock, the price plummets, and other investors are left holding stock that is worth significantly less than what they paid for it.

Watch the video below to see an excerpt from the movie 'Boiler Room' explaining how the 'Pump and Dump' scheme works.

How Pump and Dump Scheme Works Video

How to avoid:

Not only this is unsolicited financial advise, but it also comes from a person you don't know. Both are red flags when it comes to taking big decisions. Stay away from this kind of activity. This is also a little thing called “Insider Trading” which is what put Martha Stewart behind bars.

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