Mapping Out A Pump & Dump

While we were all preoccupied with exchange commotion this week, the SEC charged leaders of a trading group and a podcast host with attempting to defraud investors. The founders of Atlas Trading Group, along with several of their associates, have also been indicted by the FBI for securities fraud.

• The SEC alleges that Atlas Trading Group and a team of associates colluded to manipulate stocks and defraud investors, earning more than $100 million.
• Atlas was founded by Edward Constantin and Perry Matlock, also known as @MrZachMorris and @PJ_Matlock.
• The complaint filed by the SEC alleges that the group promoted themselves as stock-picking gurus to hundreds of thousands of followers. In reality, they bought low-cap stocks and encouraged their followers to purchase them, selling the stocks as the price rose. This is the general format of a pump-and-dump scheme.
• The group also discussed crypto and NFTs on their discord group and Twitter feeds.

Those charged in the scheme were very aware they were dumping on their followers. Officials have records of group chats, which the members thought were private, where they discuss the possibility of getting caught and the specific details of how their scheme worked. Each count of securities fraud carries a maximum of 25 years in prison.