Financial influencers
Eight influencers have been accused of fraud by the United States Department of Justice: they allegedly carried out a financial scam worth over one hundred million dollars. The scam, carried out via social media, took the form of a pump-and-dump scheme: the influencers allegedly artificially inflated the price of some titles they purchased, advertising them on the platforms (in particular on Discord and Twitter ) and lying on the their real value. Once the price rose, the stocks were sold in exchange for huge profits.The Discord forum on which the activities were carried out was called Atlas Trading. The scam went on from January 2020 until April 2022. In all, the eight accused had 1.5 million followers at their mercy. After their first court appearance on Tuesday, the scammers can expect sentences of up to twenty-five years in prison each.
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The world of financial influencing is full of controversial personalities and potentially risky situations. Online gurus give investment advice, often without real training, while showing off a luxurious lifestyle to attract more followers and media attention. This is one of the few cases where it was possible to uncover and reconstruct a criminal scheme.
On Twitter, an account called Guru Leaks collects reports of potential fraud taking place on platforms and social networks. In May, he tweeted warning against Atlas Trading.
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Members of the group often talked to each other, bragging about their exploits. In the tapes acquired by the authorities, one of the eight can be heard declaring: “We are robbing these idiots of their money! ”, referring to followers. For now, none of the defendants has made public statements and some of them have deleted their social media accounts.
If you follow financial influencers on social media, be on the lookout for red flags. If their promises seem too tempting to be true, if they boast of having discovered ways to become very rich that, coincidentally, no one else has ever revealed, if they focus only on quick and short-term investments and above all if they ask for immediate payments of sums of money, keep an eye out.