소셜 미디어 펌프 앤 덤프 제도의 법적 의미

### 펌프 앤 덤프 제도의 합법화: 금융 사기 및 규제에 대한 시사점
* ⚖ 최근 텍사스 법원은 **1억 1,400만 달러 규모의 펌프 앤 덤프 사기 혐의**로 기소된 8명의 소셜 미디어 인플루언서에 대해 **정부가 증권 사기를 입증하지 못했다**고 판결하며 기소를 기각했습니다.
* 📉 판사의 결정은 연방 사기죄에 따른 **'사기 계획'과 '사기 의도'를 좁게 해석**하여 피해자의 전통적인 재산권에 직접적인 피해를 입혀야 한다는 점을 근거로 한 것입니다.
* 🏛 이번 판결은 **이례적인 판결**로 여겨지며, 법률 전문가들이 기존 증권법 및 경제 이론에 부합하는지에 대해 의문을 제기하며 항소할 가능성이 높습니다.
* 📊 이 결정은 증권 사기 사건에 더 광범위한 영향을 미칠 수 있으며, **시장 조작을 통해 간접적으로 투자자에게 피해를 주는 사기 행위에 대한 기소를 더 어렵게 만들 수 있습니다.**
* 🔒 이번 기각은 **중개인이 거래를 중개하고 시장 가격에 정보를 의존**하는 경우가 많은 현대 금융 시장에 전통적인 사기 관련 법률을 적용하는 데 따르는 어려움을 강조합니다.
* 💼 이 사례는 **소셜 미디어 인플루언서에 대한 규제 환경**과 규제되지 않은 온라인 금융 조언의 잠재적 위험에 대한 의문을 제기합니다.
* 🔍 법률 전문가들은 이번 판결이 선례가 될 수는 없으며 항소심에서 뒤집힐 수도 있지만, **디지털 시대에 증권 사기를 명확하게 정의할 필요성**을 강조한 판결이라고 말합니다.
* 📈 이 사건의 결과는 점점 더 복잡해지는 금융 시장에서 **향후 집행 조치와 투자자 보호에 중대한 영향**을 미칠 수 있습니다.

한 그룹의 소셜 미디어 인플루언서들이 펌프 앤 덤프 사기에 연루된 혐의로 기소되었지만 텍사스 법원은 이들에 대한 모든 혐의를 기각했습니다.

Back in December 2022, I covered the story of eight US-based social media influencers charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud for a social media-based “pump and dump” scheme. One of them appears to have done some rapping, which is why I covered the story. The influencers had ripped jeans, tattoos, McLaren cars, those watches that online scammers always wear, and contrasting facial hair. They had a YouTube channel called “The Goblin Gang,” which claimed to show you what it’s like to be a multi-millionaire day trader, and a Podcast called “Pennies – Going in Raw,” where I imagine they discussed DCF models and stock valuation methods. (I haven’t actually listened to it – I’m not really interested in that stuff.) But on all their YouTube thumbnails, they had their mouths wide open – in the style of a Wall Street securities analyst or billionaire investor. The group (all of whom had silly nicknames)

were accused of engaging in a wide-ranging 
securities fraud conspiracy in which they used 
their extensive social media presence 
to hype interest in penny stocks by posting 
false and misleading information in order 
to “pump” the prices of those securities up, 
while concealing their intent to later “dump” 
their shares by selling them at the artificially 
inflated prices. Between January 2020 and April 
2022, the defendants are alleged to have made 
$114 million dollars in profit from their scheme.
Now, some of these actions might sound illegal 
to you. If you go to the SEC website (for 
example), pump and dump schemes are described 
as one of the most common investment frauds 
and fraud is usually considered a crime. So 
the case looked pretty simple to prosecute at 
the time as the SEC and criminal prosecutors had 
access to the eight defendants' trading histories 
their social media postings their discord chats 
and their private communications. And if there 
is one thing you can be sure of when people

are busy committing fraud, they send lots of emails documenting their illegal activities. Now, it might have been a struggle for the prosecutors tasked with reading their emails and social media posts, due to their terrible grammar and spelling, but, the original complaint shows that the influencers themselves felt that they were breaking the law and they frequently discussed how to conceal their illegal activities. We have since learned that they didn’t need to make as much effort concealing their activities as a Texas court recently dismissed all charges against them, ruling that the government failed to state an offense amounting to securities fraud. According to Matt Levine at Bloomberg – Pump and Dumps are Now Legal – and nothing is securities fraud. And while this might seem like bad news for investors, and even worse news for Gary Gensler (it’s hard to know what his job involves anymore). It is good news for me as I will be able

to restructure my YouTube channel, Twitter account – and most importantly my Instagram (where I have almost two thousand followers) to show people pictures of cars – and then trick them into buying penny stocks and various crypto tokens. Cornell Law School describes the steps of a pump and dump scheme on their website – which they still haven’t updated with the news that such schemes are now totally legal. They say that a typical “pump and dump” scheme begins with stock promoters loading up the stock of a microcap company. The promoters then promote or “pump” the stock (possibly by spreading false positive news about it), and if this is successful, the promoters continue to spread good news about the stock, while “dumping” their own position. Once they have sold, they move on, the stock price falls and the people who bought the stock lose their money. This is a decent description of how such a

scheme works, but it leaves out the important first step of showing people pictures of cars on the internet (which is why an Instagram account is so valuable.) They also leave out the bit about writing a memoir while in jail, becoming a motivational speaker and eventually teaching sales training courses. The whole – go to jail, write a memoir and become a motivational speaker bit is kinda out of date now that Pump and Dump schemes are entirely legal. A good motivational speaker needs that “Heroes Journey” where there is a call to adventure – then some sort of mentor guides you through the early challenges and later a crisis comes along which transforms you. If a pump and dump scheme doesn’t end with prison time, you just have an influencer who keeps pumping and dumping until people slowly grow tired of them – that’s not much of a book – it won’t be made into a film, and you can’t

really give motivational speeches about how 
people slowly got tired of you and moved on. While this dismissal may have been bad for 
investors, it’s even worse for Hollywood. So, why did a District Court Judge dismiss all charges 
against these defendants, and should you start your own pump and dump scheme as a side gig?
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code PATRICK at http://nordpass.com/patrick So, what went wrong in this court case? Well, the 
defendants were accused of committing securities   fraud (which is illegal under US federal law) 
by artificially pumping up stock prices with

bullish—and false—pronouncements and claims, 
that they were buying shares while instead selling their positions into the market at 
a profit, while their social media followers were buying. The court’s dismissal raises legal 
questions about what the government now has to prove to convict a defendant for engaging 
in a “scheme to defraud” with “intent to defraud” under the federal fraud statutes.
In his dismissal, the judge writes that even accepting as true that the victims ultimately 
lost money on the stock market because the value of their shares went down, the Defendants 
did not obtain something of value from those who were deceived. The investors' trading losses 
are one step too far removed from the defendants' alleged fraudulent misrepresentation. Instead, 
the property right of the investors that the defendants' conduct harmed, according to the 
judge, was their right to control their assets, or stated another way, was their right to 
make an informed discretionary decision.

This dismissal relies on two recent cases, both interpreting the “scheme to defraud” and “intent to defraud” elements under federal fraud statutes. The securities fraud charge in this case, according to the judge, required showing that the defendants intended to harm victims’ traditional property rights by causing them to buy the stock at allegedly inflated (or pumped up) prices. Because the losses to victims happened incidentally rather than as the “object of” the scheme, or because the defendants were totally indifferent to the effect of the scheme on their alleged victims, it was OK. So, the trick is that as long as you don’t care about – or don’t think about – the people you defraud, it’s probably legal. This judgment should also help people accused of insider trading, which also involves stock market transactions rather than personal transactions and are similarly aimed at making money rather than depriving a specific person of property.

The judge based his dismissal on a 2023 Supreme Court decision called Ciminelli v. The United States where, a contractor bribed public officials to get a city contract and was convicted of wire fraud. The Supreme Court overturned that decision ruling that that it is not wire fraud to “to deprive a victim of ‘potentially valuable economic information’ ‘necessary to make discretionary economic decisions,” only depriving victims of money is wire fraud. The other case the judge relied on was United States v. Greenlaw, a case on a “ponzi like” scheme where money was transferred out of one fund to pay distributions to another fund’s investors. The appellants argued that they did not intend to deprive their investors of money or property as a conviction under the fraud statutes requires. In that case the court found that the government had failed to prove that the investments in question were not worth what the investors had

paid for them, and that the criminal securities fraud statute requires a specific “intent to defraud,” not just a “scheme to defraud.” A Northwestern Law Review analysis by Sue Guan of Santa Clara University argues that a ruling that a fraud victim must directly surrender property to a fraudster means that any investor who buys listed securities on the basis of a fraudster’s misinformation cannot recover. She argues that this ignores longstanding tenets of economic theory and contradicts established securities law doctrine. Further, because the structural reality of today’s markets means that nearly every pump and dump scheme using social media will involve investors purchasing stock on the stock market, the ruling would effectively immunize nearly all fraud perpetrated using social media. Professor Guan explains in her paper that two foundational concepts underpin the informational focus of US securities laws. First, corporate finance theory teaches that stock prices can be expected to be efficient and act as

“information transmission mechanisms.” The more 
accurate stock prices are, the more efficiently stock markets can help allocate capital and 
productive resources across the economy. This is the argument that there is a direct link between 
stock prices and information about the stock. Securities jurisprudence, she explains, reflects 
this link between stock prices and information. A primary purpose of securities laws is to 
regulate information in markets. Two aspects of modern securities regulation work together to 
do this: the disclosure regime and prohibitions against fraud and manipulation. The disclosure 
regime incentivizes firms to disseminate accurate information, and the antifraud and 
antimanipulation prohibitions regulate and promote the accuracy of that information.
She highlights that antifraud and antimanipulation doctrine largely 
focus on fraud, deceit, falsity, and artificiality, and that court opinions in 
securities fraud and securities manipulation cases are riddled with the concern over the 
protection of the “integrity of market prices.”

In 1988, the Supreme Court endorsed what is known 
as “The fraud on The Market Theory.” That, in an   open and developed securities market, the price of 
a company’s stock is determined by the available   material information regarding the company and 
its business. Misleading statements, therefore,   defraud purchasers of stock even if the purchasers 
did not directly rely on the misstatements. The Court recognized with this theory 
that requiring each individual plaintiff   to prove direct reliance on a defendant’s 
alleged misrepresentation would create an   unrealistic evidentiary burden. So, 
while in face-to-face transactions,   the inquiry into an investor’s reliance upon 
information depends on how that information   affected the price the investor was willing 
to pay. With the existence of a market, the   market is interposed between seller and buyer and, 
ideally, transmits information to the investor in   the processed form of a market price. Thus, the 
market is performing a substantial part of the

valuation process performed by the investor in a face-to-face transaction. The market is acting as the unpaid agent of the investor, informing them that given all the information available to it, the stock is worth its market price. Courts recognize that investors who trade in public markets rely on the integrity of that price, and “because most publicly available information is reflected in market price, an investor's reliance on any public material misrepresentations may be presumed for purposes of law.” The Supreme Court recognized with the “Fraud on The Market Theory” how modern markets work where participants are buying and selling anonymously through market makers, brokers, exchanges, ETFs, and investment funds, rarely transacting directly with each other. In such a market, you can’t have a requirement that an investor is only able to make a claim if they bought securities directly from a fraudster, because that’s not how modern securities markets work. Because stock prices

transmit information, reliance on the integrity 
of market prices is enough. A fraudster only needs   to disseminate a lie or misinformation 
that is material - to break the law.  To somewhat misquote Matt Levine, if a direct 
connection between a fraudster and victim was   legally required, with the way modern markets 
work, you would never be able to conclusively   prove that the victim traded with the fraudster.
Dr. Guan points out in her paper that no such   “direct sale” requirement exists in 
the legal doctrine, nor is any such   requirement supported by economic theory.
In the Finfluencer case, the judge’s opinion   states that “while the Court acknowledges that 
defendants allegedly intended to “maximize their   own trading profits through their tweets and 
posts,” it finds that it is the “other half of   the equation—harming a victim’s traditional 
property right—that is lacking” as the only   thing the investors were deprived of 
was of accurate information necessary.

to make discretionary economic decisions.
I contacted Professor Guan for advice on best practices when running a pump and dump scheme,
or any other sort of securities fraud. Normally I would worry about putting my plans in writing or
discussing them openly here on YouTube – but In this new world where pump and dump schemes are
totally legal as long as you don’t think about the victims, I figured it should be fine, and
if the SEC wanted to press charges, the courts would likely be impressed by my advance written
statement that I’m indifferent to the effect of my schemes on any future potential victims.
Professor Guan seemed unwilling to provide any help in committing financial
crimes, I probably need to talk to a “Criminal Attorney” like Saul Goodman.
She did tell me that while the Texas ruling dismissed the indictment against the social media
influencers, it appears that the government will appeal the dismissal to the Fifth Circuit (and
in fact they filed a notice of appeal in April).

She says that with respect to the overall rule of law, this is a federal district court decision, and as such, it basically has no binding legal effect on other courts. She says that if the Fifth Circuit were to affirm the dismissal, that would bind future federal district courts within the Fifth Circuit. She went on to say that the judgment strikes her as being an outlier. The district court seems to have cast the allegations as falling under a right to control theory, a theory that the Supreme Court largely rejected in 2023 in Ciminelli v. The United States. Essentially, the district court said that the indictment alleged a scheme to defraud investors of information rather than money or property. In Ciminelli, the Supreme Court basically rejected the right to control theory, ruling that depriving someone of potentially valuable economic information necessary to make discretionary economic decisions” is not protected by the wire fraud statute because

that kind of information is not a traditional property interest like money or property. In her opinion, in doing so, the district court ignored both the economic reality of the stock market as well as the practical reality of a pump and dump scheme - where the point is certainly to obtain money. Thus, she says that she would be surprised if other courts accepted this theory or this reframing of securities pump and dump schemes. According to a law dot com article by Elisha Kobre, a Dallas-based lawyer, an appeal would almost certainly center on the fraudulent inducement theory of fraud that Ciminelli and Greenlaw managed to sidestep. In an appeal from a motion to dismiss, the original indictment’s factual allegations have to be deemed true— meaning that this alternative theory of fraud will be squarely presented and very likely decided, providing clarity to this important issue.

That probably means that I should hold off for a bit to launch my crypto coin, or discord chat where I give “not financial advice.” [clip]. For now, I’ll just post pictures of cars on Instagram, as the steps are: post photos of cars, accumulate penny stocks, pump the penny stocks, and then dump. I’ll check with Professor Guan if she thinks I should do one of those influencer coin scams instead – I’ll let you know what she says, as reading through the original case against “The Goblin Gang” they seemed to spend a lot of time discussing how they should cover their tracks, and finesse their pump and dump scheme, an influencer crypto rug pull seems so much easier – you just publicly rip people off – avoid caring about them – to keep it legal – openly admit that you did it, spend the money on an iced out watch and move on. If you missed my original video on the finfluencer

pump and dump case, back when I thought it was illegal. You can watch it here. Don’t forget to check out our sponsor NordPass using the link in the description. See you in the next video. Bye.

Pump And Dump Schemes Are Now Legal!

Patrick Boyle is a hedge fund manager, a university professor and a former investment banker. 

This channel is all about quantitative finance. By subscribing you will see videos explaining what is happening in markets right now, you will learn about financial derivatives, corporate finance and how traders use quantitative tools like statistics. You will see interviews with some of the most interesting people in the financial industry.  In addition, you will see some longer form documentaries on the history of financial markets.

To contact Patrick go to the website http://onfinance.org

DISCLAIMER:
This channel is not affiliated with any financial institution. The videos on this channel are for entertainment purposes only and do not constitute financial advice. Those seeking investment advice should seek out a registered professional. Patrick is not responsible for investment actions taken by viewers and his content should not be used as a basis for investment.

Patrick Boyle

미국 소셜 미디어 인플루언서들의 펌프 앤 덤프 사기 사례

미국의 소셜 미디어 인플루언서 8명이 '펌프 앤 덤프' 사기로 1억 1,400만 달러의 수익을 올린 혐의로 증권 사기 공모 혐의로 기소되었습니다.

인플루언서들은 소셜 미디어를 이용해 허위 정보로 페니 주식에 대한 관심을 부추겼지만, 최근 텍사스 법원에서 이들에 대한 모든 혐의가 기각되었습니다.

이 판결로 인해 펌프 앤 덤프 사기의 합법성과 투자자에게 미칠 잠재적 영향에 대한 우려가 제기되었습니다.

법원의 기각 결정이 증권 사기 사건에 미치는 영향

법원의 기각 결정은 증권 사기 사건에서 정부가 입증해야 할 사항에 대한 법적 의문을 제기합니다.

판사의 결정은 투자자들의 거래 손실이 사기성 허위 진술 혐의와 너무 멀리 떨어져 있기 때문에 피고들이 속은 사람들로부터 가치 있는 것을 얻지 못했다는 생각에 근거한 것입니다.

이번 기각 결정은 연방 사기 관련 법령에 따라 '사기 계획' 사건을 기소하는 방식에 중대한 영향을 미칩니다.

최근 판례에서는 피고인이 자신의 사기가 피해자에게 미치는 영향에 무관심하다면 합법적인 것으로 간주된다는 연방 사기 법령을 해석한 바 있습니다.

이 사건의 증권 사기 혐의에 대한 해석은 2023년 대법원 판결 및 '폰지 유사' 사기와 관련된 판례에 근거한 것입니다.

이 해석은 잠재적으로 소셜 미디어를 이용해 행해지는 거의 모든 사기에 면죄부를 줄 수 있으며 사기범의 잘못된 정보로 인해 투자자가 손실을 회복하지 못하는 것을 방지할 수 있습니다.

주가가 정보 전달에 미치는 영향

주가는 경제 전반에 걸쳐 자본을 효율적으로 배분하는 데 중요한 역할을 합니다.

증권법은 공시 요건과 사기 방지 조치를 통해 정보를 규제하는 데 중점을 두고 있습니다.

'시장 사기 이론'은 투자자에게 정보를 전달하는 시장의 역할을 인정하고 법적 목적으로 공개 주가에 대한 투자자의 신뢰도를 추정할 수 있도록 허용합니다.

사기꾼의 수법이 금융 시장에 미치는 영향

시장의 무결성은 정확한 정보에 의존하지만, 현행 법률은 사기범과 피해자를 직접적으로 연결하지 않습니다.

최근 핀플루언서 사건은 정확한 정보를 얻지 못한 투자자에 대한 보호가 부족하다는 의문을 제기했습니다.

텍사스주 판결에도 불구하고 정부의 항소와 향후 법원 판결에 미칠 잠재적 영향은 이러한 문제를 둘러싼 불확실성이 계속되고 있음을 보여줍니다.

주식 시장의 펌프 앤 덤프 방식에 대한 논란

펌프 앤 덤프 사기가 전통적인 재산적 이익에 해당하지 않는다는 지방법원의 기각 결정에 대한 비판이 제기되었습니다.

항소는 사기 유인 이론에 초점을 맞출 것으로 예상되며, 이 중요한 문제를 명확히 하고 암호화폐 코인이나 인플루언서 사기와 같은 새로운 벤처의 출시에 잠재적으로 영향을 미칠 수 있습니다.

원래 사건의 흔적 은폐와 교묘함에 대한 논의로 인해 인플루언서 암호화폐 러그 풀이라는 겉보기에는 더 쉬운 접근 방식이 고려되고 있습니다.