SEC and DOJ Charged Eight Social Media Influencers in an Alleged $100 Million Stock Manipulation Scheme on Twitter and Discord

The SEC and DOJ didn’t disclose which stocks were promoted under the alleged pump-and dump scheme.

The DOJ also claimed that they ran a community online for individual stock trader called Atlas Trading. This “defendants promoted” as the largest free online community in the world and had a chatroom named Atlas Trading Discord. According to the DOJ, the defendants used Atlas Trading’s Discord channel for misleading and false information about securities that they pumped and dumped in the scheme.

The following seven people were charged with securities fraud. They were identified by the SEC with their Twitter accounts names: Perry Matlock, Edward Constantin, Thomas Cooperman, Gary Deel (@notoriousalerts), Mitchell Hennessey and Stefan Hrvatin (@LadeBackk), John Rybarcyzk and John Rybarcyzk both (@Ultra_Calls).

Matlock is identified on Matlock’s social media as the “CEO” of Atlas Trading and Fintwit. His Twitter account appeared to have been deleted as of Wednesday.

The SEC also charged Daniel Knight (Twitter handle @DipDeity), with aiding and abiding the scheme. Knight was accused of co-hosting a podcast where he promoted many other traders as experts and gave them a platform to make manipulative statements.” According to the complaint, Knight traded “in concert” with other defendants and also generated profit from the manipulation.