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US Charges English Twins Over $1.2m 'Stock Robot' Fraud
peetm writes "Twin brothers from England face U.S. civil charges for allegedly defrauding investors out of $1.2m (£745,000) through a bogus stock-picking robot. The twins, Alexander and Thomas Hunter, were just 16 years old when they devised the scam — which fooled around 75,000 people, according to U.S. officials."
Needed to figure out what exactly was bogus about this since there shouldn't be anything too wrong about someone recommending stocks that fail even with a "robot".
The Securities and Exchange Commission said the stocks "picked" were actually firms that paid the twins hefty fees
I assume it's because there's a difference between just being bad stocks and being bribed into recommending stocks.
21st century version of the Mechanical Turk
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Twins are evil.
They have already been tried in the UK court and lost most of what the gained. It is a bid unfair in my mind.
Do you think it would be allowed, ie tried twice, once by the US government and then by the UK government if they where in the US. They would probabily get a job offer in the US.
I can't wait for the moment they get a similar issue with a Chinese coder........
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£745,000. 75000 people. Fraud or not, they've scammed these people for on average just under £9.95 a person. Don't know about you, but if I found out I'd been scammed by two teenagers to the tune of a tenner for being greedy and gullible, I'd consider that a very cheap lesson and I might even have a laugh over it. Well done, Hunter twins, for making a million dollars out of greedy people. And another lesson learned: If you've got money, people get envious.
Now what I always find interesting is when the numbers don't work. According to TFA, "investors paid $47 for newsletters listing Marl's stock picks and $97 for a home version of the software". Yet on average, the investors are down just a tenner? I don't mean to nitpick, but to me that sounds like the bloody thing actually worked. Oh, wait, it was unregulated software. What would you expect from two 16-year-olds?
I'm a bit worried about the precedent this is setting though. If I choose to buy a newspaper with a horoscope in there, or if I buy horoscope software and the predictions don't come true, should I sue?
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So somebody gives a shit about 2, 2 bit crooks in UK. Good for them.
How about SEC not doing their job even though they've been notified multiple times about a pump and dump operation that is ran by the very definition of a pumper and dumper?
Oh, I forgot, that's the same SEC that was notified about Madoff years before his pyramid blew up. Same SEC that was absolutely useless during the Internet and the housing bubbles and now during this bond and dollar bubble. Well, I suppose later they'll come out and say: nobody could have seen it coming.
You can't handle the truth.
There was a chinese wall ! One twin was handling commission for firms, the other one recommendations to clients.
Oh wait, that's only good if you're Goldman Sachs.
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As long as the charges are for a distinct offense, double jeopardy does not apply. Review the definition of double jeopardy carefully. And double jeopardy hardly applies to US courts for UK convictions.
Their main legal mistake was that they were providing unregulated financial advise.
Other than that, their business wasn't all that different from most of the others. Pretty much everyone in the financial market, big bank or small trading company, is bordering on outright fraud. Yes, I have bit of insider knowledge, from long before the crash. This has been going on for quite a while.
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When it comes to corporations, US law is the only one that matters when it comes to protecting the company, but when it comes to tax law, Grand Cayman law is the only one that matters and when it comes to labor law, China is the only one that matters. They don't care about England.
You are welcome on my lawn.
to clarify the term: a 'put' is an option to sell at a certain price. so one makes money if the market price is lower than the option price.
It's a bet that the item's price will go down, and in this case a distrust of his banker's stock tips.
('call' option is the other way around)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
This is awesome, at least the project is. Did these brothers really defraud anyone? Think about it, they offered stock advice which caused a change in the stock market, stock brokers do the same thing and there no more accurate. If your going to charge these twins then you need to charge every single broker who has ever lost money by making bad stock picks because in a sense this program did nothing different.
However, that does not appear to be how actual courts find according to the newspapers. I don't know if the law has changed, or if the courts have difficulties with reality.
My local government department claimed they would plead "corporate insanity" if prosecuted for being reckless, but I have it on good legal advice that corporate pleas of insanity are not recognised in the UK.
Disclaimer: If you sue me, I will lead insanity too.p
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