The U.S. government has charged eight social media influencers with securities fraud, alleging they used Twitter and messaging app Discord to manipulate exchange-traded stocks as part of a $100 million fraud scheme, The Hill reported. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said in a release that seven of those charged promoted themselves as successful traders and gained hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter and in stock trading chatrooms on Discord since January 2020. They allegedly bought certain stocks and encouraged their followers to do the same by indicating that they were buying, holding or adding to their stock positions. But an SEC complaint states that when share prices or trading volumes rose in the promoted stocks, they regularly sold their shares without disclosing their plans to drop their securities.
