Influencer Group Atlas Trading Collective Involved In $14M Pump & Dump Scheme

meanwhile, it was a classic pump and dump scheme that this one had a twist. The Securities and Exchange Commission charging eight social media influencers with securities fraud. They said they were part of 100 and $14 million scheme to use twitter and discord to manipulate the price of stocks. The group of influencers known as atlas trading collectively had about 1.5 million followers. They purchased those stocks that had low trading volume and told their followers to buy them soon after they quote regularly sold those shares without ever disclosing their plans to dump the securities while they were promoting them. The sec saying in a news release that one of the defendants was recorded on a voice chat saying, quote, we're robbing effing idiots of their money. I mean the allegations in this absolutely stunning here, Chloe baker, I mean this is another classic case of regulation, not keeping up with technology, we know that, you know, the influencer space has been under regulated in part because I think regulators at this point still don't quite understand how it works. I actually think this is not an entirely different conversation than the one that we're having about celebrities and influencers promoting Cryptocurrency obviously that not being, you know, they're not being malice in that they're not actually trying to pump and dump in that situation. But again, these high risk areas and these influencers are almost going unchecked in this respect by promoting these stocks. So I wonder if this is going to serve as sort of an example, moving forward of more regulation and cracking down on the influencer space here.