http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9192120/Man_pleads_guilty_to_using_hack_pump_and_dump_botnet 

By Robert McMillan
IDG News Service
October 20, 2010 

A Chandler, Ariz., man has pleaded guilty to charges related to his role 
in a pump-and-dump scam that inflated penny stock prices via spam and 
hacked computers.

James Bragg, 41, faces five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for 
orchestrating the hacking and spamming portions of the scheme, which ran 
between November 2007 and February 2009, according to prosecutors. He 
pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the District of New 
Jersey.

Bragg used a Russian botnet operator, named only as B.T. in court 
documents, to send the spam and to access hacked brokerage accounts and 
buy the penny stocks without the victim's knowledge.

The case sheds some light into the murky world of penny stock 
manipulation, where companies hire shady promoters to boost their stock 
prices. The promoters appear to be legitimate marketing and public 
relations firms, but some of them use illegal practices such as spamming 
to achieve results.

[...]


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