Twitter & Discord influencers charged in $100 million stock scam

According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions, eight individuals were charged $100 million for a stock scam they performed on Twitter and Discord, where the individuals allegedly manipulated their followers.

The scams began in January 2020, during which seven individuals “promoted themselves as successful traders and cultivated hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter and in stock trading chatrooms on Discord.”

They then pleaded their social media followers, estimated to be hundreds of thousands of people, to buy the stocks and to invest on both Twitter and Discord. These influencers expressed they had certain price points they wanted to reach, and wanted their followers to buy the stock to essentially help them reach that point. They allegedly fed the followers a plethora of misinformation to manipulate them.

But without communicating with their big community of loyal followers, they sold their shares. In layman’s terms, they used their followers to increase the price of a stock, lied through omission and manipulated hundreds of thousands of followers in order to make a quick buck themselves. The alleged amount of profits is estimate to be $100 million.

All the names and social media handles of the defendants were publicly revealed in the official press release:

Name	State of Residence	Twitter Handle
Perry Matlock	Texas	@PJ_Matlock
Edward Constantin	Texas	@MrZackMorris
Thomas Cooperman	California	@ohheytommy
Gary Deel	California	@notoriousalerts
Mitchell Hennessey	New Jersey	@Hugh_Henne
Stefan Hrvatin	Florida	@LadeBackk
John Rybarczyk	Texas	@Ultra_Calls

According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s press release, “The complaint further charges Daniel Knight (Twitter Handle @DipDeity), of Texas, with aiding and abetting the alleged scheme by, among other things, co-hosting a podcast in which he promoted many of the other individuals as expert traders and provided them with a forum for their manipulative statements.”

The SEC, also known as the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed their complaint in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, and “seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties against each defendant, as well as a penny stock bar against Hrvatin.”

Investigations are still ongoing.