Fined For Bogus Stock News Article
from the how-illegal-is-it? dept
A guy in California has been fined for posting a fake Reuters article on a Yahoo! message board last year (including real bylines) about non-existent negative Goldman Sachs coverage of a stock. Lots of people reading the message board seemed to believe the fake report, and sold off shares of the stock, allowing the guy to profit to the tune of $350 - significantly less than the $25,000 fine. Still, while the guy was "manipulating" the stock, you do have to wonder just how gullible people are to simply buy a Yahoo message board post as a Reuters report without looking elsewhere. It's almost to the point where they deserve whatever losses they got hit with.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Wizard's First Rule...
At least THIS guy didn't profit from it.
/sick and tired of hearing about small fines/settlements for people who made hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]