Firms targeted in spam share scam
213760
Spammers offering stock market windfalls are luring firms with promises of higher share prices, analysts say.
546044
MessageLabs reports a surge in malicious spam aimed at individuals in senior management positions--and their family members.
407664
The United States tops the &quot;Dirty Dozen&quot; list of spam-producing countries released by security firm Sophos. &quot;The problem is that there is so much money to be made with spam, and it is very
601370
Eleven people, including one of the top spammers in the world, were indicted on Thursday for allegedly sending millions of unsolicited e-mails intended to inflate the price of Chinese penny stocks.The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) called the scheme one of the largest spamming and fraud operations in the U.S. The 41-count indictment charges the defendants with conspiracy, several types of fraud, and money laundering.The indictment alleges the group sent spam via botnets, or networks of hacked computers. A three-year investigation revealed the e-mails, which implored investors to buy cheap stocks, contained fake headers and other misleading information, the DOJ said.After the price of a stock increased, the defendants sold at the artificially inflated price, a practice known as a&#160;pump-and-dump&#160;scam, according to the indictment. In mid-2005, the stock spam netted the defendants around $3 million, the DOJ said.Those charged include Alan M. Ralsky, 52, of West Bloomfield, Michigan. Spamhaus, a London-based organization that tracks spamming operations, listed&#160;Ralsky as one of the top professional spammers&#160;in the world. Also indicted was Ralsky&#39;s son-in-law, Scott K. Bradley, 46.Ralsky settled with Verizon after being sued in 2002 over spam. Ralsky and his company, Additional Benefits, agreed to pay Verizon and to stop sending spam on Verizon&#39;s network.Three of the 11 accused have been detained, and the rest -- including Ralsky -- are being sought, the DOJ said.
574785
(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has suspended trading for 35 companies that allegedly benefited from spam e-mail campaigns to hype their stocks. The SEC action Thursday is the most suspensions of companies with stock hyped in spam, the SEC said in a news release. The suspensions, which will last for 10 business days, are part of a stepped-up SEC effort called Operation Spamalot aimed at protecting investors from potentially fraudulent spam campaigns hyping small-company stock, the SEC said. The e-mails used phrases such as "ready to explode," "ride the bull" and "fast money." The 35 companies have been quoted on the Pink Sheets over-the-counter stock service. They are not listed on any exchange or on the OTC Bulletin Board, the SEC said. The SEC estimated that 100 million such stock-trading e-mail messages are sent each week, often triggering dramatic spikes in share prices and trading volumes before the spamming stops and investors lose their money, the SEC said. "When spam clogs our mailboxes, it's annoying," SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said in a statement. "When it rips off investors, it's illegal and destructive. Today's trading suspensions, and actions that will follow, should send a clear message to spammers: the SEC will hold you accountable." The SEC said it continues to investigate the source of the spam. Among the spam campaigns noted by the SEC: * On Dec. 15, shares in Apparel Manufacturing Associates closed at $0.06, with a trading volume of 3,500 shares. After a weekend spam campaign proclaiming, "Huge news expected out on APPM, get in before the wire, we're taking it all the way to $1.00," trading volume on Dec. 18, volume hit 484,568 shares with the price spiking to over $0.19 a share. Two days later the price climbed to $0.45. By Dec. 27, the price was back down to $0.10 on trading volume of 65,350 shares. * On Dec. 19, trading in Goldmark Industries closed at $0.17 on trading volume of 126,286 shares. On Dec. 20, the spam campaign started with e-mail proclaiming "GDKI IS MAKING EVERYONE BANK!" and setting a five-day price target of $2. By Dec. 28, spam boasted of a price spike of 152 percent in two days and promised a five-day price target of $1. That same day, the company's stock closed at $.35 on a volume of more than 5 million shares. By Jan. 9, the closing share price was back down to $0.15. Advanced Powerline Technologies, iPackets International, Software Effective Solutions, Sports-stuff.com, and UBA Technology are among the other companies affected by the SEC suspensions. Secure Computing, a cybersecurity software vendor, praised the SEC for its action. The 35 companies suspended represent some of the most "mass-promoted" companies, the company said. There are more than 600 stock symbols sold on the Pink Sheets and OTC Bulletin Board exchanges that have been promoted through spam in the past year, the company said in an e-mail.
38054
Lycos made headlines during the past several days by distributing a screensaver designed to swamp the sites of those deemed responsible for spam with traffic, in effect giving spammers, at least the companies that bankroll them, a taste of their own
747600
The fight against spam is getting more serious as the net&#39;s big players impose conditions on bulk mail senders. From October, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Earthlink and Comcast want those that send lots of messages
196243
Revelations of corporate fraud are dependent on a wide range of sometimes unlikely players.
269359
(InfoWorld) - Hoping to tackle the growing problem of pump-and-dump stock scams Microsoft has quietly filed lawsuits against at least three alleged perpetrators who it says used its MSN Hotmail networks to promote stocks. Hotmail has "received large volumes of unsolicited commercial e-mail messages" promoting stocks for such companiesÂ as Distributed Power, TGC Ventures, China Biolife Enterprises, and Irwin Resources, according to court documents filed during April and May in King County Superior Court in Seattle. Microsoft charges the defendants with violating the federal CAN-SPAM act as well as Washington state consumer protection laws and is seeking unspecified damages, according to the filings. Pump-and-dump e-mail scams are a form of fraud where the criminals purchase stock in a company -- typically an inexpensive penny stock -- and then promote the equity in millions of unsolicited email messages. The technique is one of the more lucrative spamming practices and has been "the fastest growing area in spam" over the past few months, said Craig Schmugar, a threat research manager with McAfees' Avert Labs. Pump-and-dump spam has not only taken up resources and threatened the smooth functioning of Hotmail, but it "continues to result in significant costs to Microsoft," the court filings state. Microsoft executives were not immediately available to comment for this story. Because Microsoft does not know the name of the spammers behind the unsolicited e-mails, it has filed the lawsuits as "John Doe" cases, giving it the power to subpoena information in the case and ultimately name the parties responsible when they are uncovered. It's the latest move in the cat and mouse game between pump-and-dump spammers and the technology companies trying to stop them. Pump-and-dump scams are gaining more attention from criminals and companies like Microsoft for one simple reason: They work. Researchers at Purdue and Oxford Universities recently examined the dynamics of pump-and-dump and found that spammers could realize 5 percent returns in a single day. Because these scams are so lucrative, they've attracted some of the most technically competent spammers to develop new techniques, said Adam O'Donnell, a senior research scientist at Cloudmark. "The pump-and-dump schemes are basically driving spam research and development," he said. Primarily, this research has centered around the creation of templates that can be used by infected PCs to create spam messages and on a form of e-mail known as image spam, O'Donnell said. These image spam messages look just like any other e-mail but are in fact .jpg or .gif images. Image spam is also particularly well-suited to pump-and-dump because the fraudsters don't need victims to click on a link for scam to work. Over the past year, image spammers have developed a variety of techniques to confuse spam filters, said McAfee's Schmugar. They've added colorful backgrounds, wavy text, and filled their messages with nonsense text to try to evade optical character recognition technologies, he said. For example, a recent spam message promoting China Biolife Enterprises, one of the stocks named in Microsoft's suit, contained the following message: "Symbol CBFE Price $1.55 (UP 11.51%) Target $4 Market: Bullish. Strangler minott goodnight bennett rebel rousers." With the jump in pump-and-dump e-mail, O'Donnell said it's no surprise that Microsoft has brought the lawsuits. "Hotmail is heavily used and is viewed by the Web community as one of the most challenging spam environments right now," he said.
105185
Early access to profits A firm that allegedly hacked into corporate servers to access news releases early has been sued by US market regulators.â¦
663936
bulk messages clogging instant-messaging accounts. AOL and its Anti-Spam Alliance partners -- EarthLink, Microsoft, and Yahoo
602544
Some five billion spam messages have been sent to recipients using a first-ever, professionally-looking PDF file that advertised a German stock scam.
61832
Microsoft is taking legal action against people it claims are responsible for spam e-mail campaigns, particularly those who send out unsolicited and sexually explicit e-mail.
494780
A law firm in Colorado has been fined by federal court after a spam filter intercepted an important court notice.
709015
Spammers have turned to the use of PDF-based e-mail messages to try to slip under the security radar and get their messages through to unsuspecting recipients.
267592
(InfoWorld) - The Securities and Exchange Commission has taken the drastic step of suspending trading in shares of 35 companies whose stocks have frequently been touted in mass spam campaigns. SEC officials said on Feb. 8 that the firms involved -- none of which are household names -- have been the subject of repeated spam efforts meant to drive up trading of their securities and, subsequently, the value of the companies themselves. The trading bans will last for 10 days, after which shares in the involved companies will be unlocked -- unless the SEC's ongoing investigation proves any of the firms were involved in the e-mail schemes. While the ban might seem unfair to the businesses involved, especially if their names and securities were merely selected by scammers looking for penny stocks to inflate in so-called pump-and-dump operations, SEC officials said that in each business's case, there were sufficient questions raised regarding the "adequacy and accuracy" of information being advertised about the companies. Criminals have increasingly begun using spam to drive up interest in cheap stocks over the last several years. Before sending out mass messages about a specific firm, the individuals buy stock in the companies in the expectation that, with their e-mails, they can convince other people to purchase shares. When prices of the shares involved rise, the schemers sell off their own holdings, thus the pump-and-dump moniker. The spam messages, which often feature subject lines such as "Fast Money," have become one of the types of unwanted e-mail most frequently delivered to inboxes over the last year, alongside advertisements for prescription medications. Whenever misleading information is being widely distributed about a firm whose securities are traded, the SEC takes such actions, an agency representative said. "All we can say is that we suspend trading any time we think misinformation about specific securities is being reported," said Helene Glotzer, an SEC spokeswoman. "We're not making a statement that these companies themselves were behind the misstatements, but if the information is out there we feel it is important to let the investing public know; we'll continue our investigation, and if it is appropriate to take action against any of the companies, that is what we will do." The suspensions are part of an SEC initiative known as Operation Spamalot, which was launched specifically to shield investors from spam e-mail "hyping" small company stocks. SEC officials said that anyone who has received such e-mail will recognize the names of the companies who were suspended, as they are among the most frequently cited businesses in securities-related spam campaigns. The messages typically advertise some new product or impending deal that will increase the value of the companies and encourage investors to buy their low-priced securities, which are usually penny stocks. For instance, among the companies whose shares were suspended is Apparel Manufacturing Associates, a Bloomfield, Conn.-based firm that markets itself as a management and development company focused on the fashion arena. The SEC said that on Friday, Dec. 15, 2006, shares in Apparel Manufacturing closed at 6 cents, on a trading volume of 3,500 shares. After a weekend-long spam campaign using e-mails about the company advertising "huge news" that encouraged investors to "get in before the wire," trading volume in the stock rose to 484,568 shares on Monday, Dec. 18, with the price of the stock rising to more than 19 cents a share. The agency said that two days later the price had climbed to 45 cents per share, but one week after, Apparel Manufacturing's share price had fallen to 10 cents on trading volume of 65,350 shares. Calls to the company seeking comment on the stock suspension were not immediately returned. If the SEC investigation finds no link between the companies involved and the spam campaigns, their shares will be released for trading on March 21, 2007. SEC officials noted that the suspensions were all handed out to companies that are not subject to the SEC reporting requirements and whose shares are not listed on any exchange or on the OTC Bulletin Board. This means that brokers posting quotations for the purchase and sale of the securities are not required to conduct due diligence regarding the issuers, according to the agency. The 35 companies whose trading was suspended by the SEC are: Advanced Powerline Technologies, America Asia Petroleum, Amerossi International Group, Apparel Manufacturing Associates, Asgard Holdings, Biogenerics, China Gold, CTR Investments & Consulting, DC Brands International, Equal Trading, Equitable Mining, Espion International, Goldmark Industries, GroFeed, Healtheuniverse, Interlink Global, Investigative Services Agencies, iPackets International, Koko Petroleum, Leatt Corporation, LOM Logistics, Modern Energy, National Healthcare Logistics, Presidents Financial, Red Truck Entertainment, Relay Capital, Rodedawg International Industries, Rouchon Industries, Software Effective Solutions, Solucorp Industries, Sports-stuff.com, UBA Technology, Wataire Industries, WayPoint Biomedical Holdings, and Wineco Productions.
532155
The US&#39;s biggest internet companies have launched yet another crackdown against spammers as part of their latest efforts to protect net users from junk email.