Re: How Lucrative is Pump-and-Dump Spam?

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Yes, it was for fun. A little "in-house science experiment". :-)

I think I said that straight away...

- - ferg


- -- Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com> wrote:

On Fri, 9 Mar 2007, Fergie wrote:
> Over the last month, Moriarty, director of product development for
> Internet Content Security at Trend Micro, has been running a virtual
> portfolio of selling short on stocks found during spam runs. After 22
> transactions in a five-week period, he has earned a whopping $25,610.

Virtual, i.e. he really didn't do it.


> Short selling (shorting) a stock is the act of profiting from a stock
> price going down. A short seller will typically borrow a security and
> sell it, expecting that it will decrease in value so that they can buy it
> back at a lower price and keep the difference.

Brokages will not let you short penny stocks.

> "I made money on every transaction," he added.

You can't spend virtual money you didn't actual make.

If you actually tried shorting penny spam stocks, you would probably still 
lose your money to the con.  Because you would have to "borrow" (i.e. 
someone has to buy it) the stock from the con-men in the first place, and 
then pay the con-men again for stock to cover the short.  And the brokers,
transfer agents, etc all make commissions each time.



-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP Desktop 9.5.3 (Build 5003)

wj8DBQFF8ggMq1pz9mNUZTMRAnP7AJsHkb2BwRSD9gY6ZUh33SlPS7qkZgCgwpuQ
FW6pB2s3/XrhO14K7nOOp/w=
=ax0d
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.