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Software Targets Illegally Inflated Stocks

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 August 2008, 14:45 CDT

New software developed to spot fraudulent trading patterns is successfully catching scammers who use the net to hype up stocks.

Internet conmen are using junk mail to hype stocks so they can sell shares they own in the companies at a profit.

Experts believe an estimated 15% of all spam or junk e-mail is made up of messages that "pump" stocks that are later "dumped".

The anti-fraud software, developed by web giant VeriSign, works by keeping an eye on real-time trading activity.

"This gives brokers a jump on the attackers and raises the bar," said Perry Tancredi, senior manager of anti-fraud services at Verisign.

The schemes, known as “pump and dump”, involve stocks that have had their price artificially inflated—sometimes achieved by manipulating the market but often it is done by sending out a spam run tricking small investors to cash in on a stock.

The fraudsters then quickly sell the overhyped shares collecting profits for themselves and causing investors and brokerages to lose money.

Spammers can regularly make a return of up to 6% via such schemes, according to a study of such scams in 2006.

Regarded as one of the most common Internet frauds by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), they cost people billions of dollars a year. Typically scammers target so-called penny stocks for these scams.

"Investors need to be extra careful when they are investing in this kind of company because they can lose all of their money and these stocks are particularly vulnerable to manipulation more than ever because of the internet," said John Stark, head of internet enforcement at the SEC.

Verisign's fraud detection kit would help "decrease the time between the attack being launched and the brokerage being able to respond", said Tancredi.

Brokerages in the past relied on counter measures such as restrictive stock trading or analysis packages that only spotted a problem when money had gone.

Verisign's software is a module that brokers can add to their in-house trading system that alerts anti-fraud teams to look more closely at trades that exhibit certain behavior patterns.

"What this self-learning behavioral engine does is look at the different attributes of the event, not necessarily about the computer or where you are logging on from but about the actual transaction, the trade, the amount of the trade," said Tancredi.

"For example have you liquidated all of your assets in stock that you own in order to buy one penny stock?" he said.

"Another example is when a customer who normally trades tech stock on NASDAQ all of a sudden trades a penny stock that has to do with health care and is placing a trade four times more than normal."

The software looks at the behavior of a penny stock, therefore it can cope with cases where those buying shares are doing so for the first time or have been victims of identity theft.

Tancredi said the fraudster may buy that one stock in multiple small chunks to stay under the radar, but “we can pick that up and send an alert on that.”

"More subtly it will detect and question if say five people at the same brokerage are trading this one penny stock in a short period of time and that stock has shown a spike in volatility, that will also raise a red flag,” he said.

So far, there are no exact figures available for how much scammers using "pump and dump" schemes are getting away with.

"People are somewhat shy on reporting losses because it erodes investor confidence," said Geoff Turner, a senior analyst with Forrester Research.

Turner said one pump and dump scheme revolving GTX Global involved tens of millions of dollars.

Software that could effectively stop this kind of fraud in its tracks was something the business world would welcome, he said.

"Pump and dump increases the cost of doing business in terms of the loss in the marketplace," he said.

"VeriSign has taken a proven concept in counter fraud control activity from what they have been successful in doing in the online banking environment and that is to gauge the risk of a specific account activity on the fly and score the risk when they see something that departs from the norm."

Mr Stark from the SEC told the BBC that it could not comment on a commercial product, but said the Commission worked closely with many agencies to pursue fraudsters.

He said: "This is basic lying, cheating and stealing and the message to anyone engaging in these shenanigans is they are going to get caught."

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On the Net:

• VeriSign
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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