FBI Criminal Conviction in Online Pump-And-Dump
(December 4) The U.S. Attorney in Trenton and the Newark, New Jersey office of the FBI announced the criminal conviction of the leader of a multifaceted online stock manipulation scheme.
Christopher Rad, 44, of Cedar Park Texas, was found guilty on six counts. He’ll be sentenced next year. Rad and others paid a network of international spammers $1.4M to spread computer viruses, creating a bot network of hijacked computers to distribute promotional spam intended to raise the price of 39 publicly traded stocks. Command and control of this botnet operated from Russia and China. Rad also made bad faith purchases, falsified documents, and orchestrated hacking into third-party brokerage accounts over 22 months from 2007 through 2009.
(FBI’s Newark office, via the Atlantic Highlands Herald at www.ahherald.com)