An Idaho man who allegedly managed to access stock picks by personal finance website Motley Fool before publication and made millions of dollars trading on the information has been charged with securities fraud.
David Stone, 36, was charged Tuesday by federal prosecutors in Manhattan over trades placed between 2020 and 2022. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a tandem civil complaint against Stone that also named a friend, John D. Robson, as complicit in the scheme. The SEC identified the investment advisory service from which the stock picks were stolen as Motley Fool.
The SEC said Stone made more than $3.9 million using the tactic, and Robson made $3 million.
Among the dozens of recommended companies whose shares Stone and Robson traded based on the hacks were Amazon.com Inc., Lululemon Athletica Inc., Peloton Interactive Inc., Airbnb Inc. and Coinbase Global Inc., according to the SEC.
Really? They stole the MF stock picks? Does anyone even look at those? ??
You’d be surprised.
On other boards, for example the Retirement Investing board, every once in a while somebody will come in and ask questions about details of one or more of the TMF “premium services” – Stock Advisor – Rule Breakers – Rule Your Retirement.
The tone of the questions implies that they believe that everybody subscribes to these services and invests according to the recommendations.
I wouldn’t have thought that TMF stock picks actually affected market prices esp. in stocks like AMZN.
That’s the great thing about securities fraud in an upmarket. Your plan might be totally stupid, but you will probably make money no matter what because the market is going up.
A lot of things are being used by hedge funds to get returns. Besides message boards like this one, seeking alphas, Reddit, Twitter, app downloads, credit card receipts, Amazon sales rank, just to name a few
