According to the SEC complaint, the two British brothers, Thomas Edward Hunter and Alexander John Hunter, who were only 16 when they launched their alleged pump-and-dump scheme in 2007, deceived their customers into believing they had a stock-picking robot able to predict which penny stocks were about to jump in value.
“The defendants’ characterization of the software led investors to believe that they were receiving stock recommendations based on a complex, statistically-driven analysis,” said the SEC complaint.
Nevertheless, the Hunter brothers used two main websites, doublingstocks.com and daytradingrobot.com, to hype stocks to investors. Meanwhile, they used another website, equitypromoter.com, in order to raise money from companies that wanted the twins’ robot to promote their stocks.
When the British twins received money from the companies wanting their stock to be promoted, they urged their subscribers to buy the same stocks. Then, the promoters sold their own shares after the prices had gone up.
The Hunter twins defrauded 75,000 people, mostly US citizens, out of $1.2 million and also took at least $1.865 million from companies that wanted them tout their stocks.
ISH/PKH/HE
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