Fake Bloomberg website sends Twitter stock soaring

[Scorpus]

A fake website set up by a bunch of scammers, designed to imitate the look of legitimate news outlet Bloomberg, has led to a seven percent increase in Twitter's stock value after the fake website published an article relating to the social network.

The article published on fake domain Bloomberg.market (seen above), which has since been taken down, claimed that Twitter would be acquired for $31 billion, possibly by Google. As news quickly spread to traders fooled by the website's attempts at imitating the real Bloomberg, Twitter's NYSE stock spiked at 11.45am before returning to previous trends around half an hour later.

The owner of the fake website hasn't been identified, as they used WhoisGuard to mask their real name when registering the domain in Panama. It is likely the article was published as part of a 'pump and dump' stock fraud scheme, where the scammers would have held Twitter stock before selling it after their fake news pushed the stock price up.

While the website's design was a good reproduction of Bloomberg, numerous grammatical errors and a misspelling of former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo's name as "Costello" hinted that this wasn't a real Bloomberg article. After the pumping and dumping of Twitter stock had occurred, Bloomberg spoesperson Ty Trippet confirmed that Bloomberg.market was not a domain owned by the real Bloomberg.

Twitter stock ended up rising by 2.6% during yesterday's trading, largely unaffected (except for one large spike) by the release of the fake news.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/61370-fake-bloomberg-website-sends-twitter-stock-soaring.html

 

[VitalyT]

The owner of the fake website hasn't been identified

This should be fairly easy to track down for any of those 3-letter organizations: Just take each of the top 10 earners on the day from the stock trading, and shake the tree he is sitting on, so to speak.

As the saying goes: "Follow the money."

 

[davislane1]

Just take each of the top 10 earners on the day from the stock trading, and shake the tree he is sitting on, so to speak.

You'll find as much fruit in that tree as you will pressure in a vacuum. If you've got an account big enough to trade that kind of size, you aren't setting up half-baked websites to manipulate markets.

 

[VitalyT]

You'll find as much fruit in that tree as you will pressure in a vacuum. If you've got an account big enough to trade that kind of size, you aren't setting up half-baked websites to manipulate markets.

Trading pattern on the day speaks for itself

 

[davislane1]

Trading pattern on the day speaks for itself

You misunderstand my statement. The top ten earners on that move will each have made several hundred thousand dollars, if not a few mill (institutional accounts not withstanding). To do that, you need to be very highly levered. To be sized enough to make "top ten" money on that move, from the $36 handle, you need to be trading with a minimum of $1,000,000 in equity, otherwise you can't put on the size necessary to make that kind of trade.

Manipulation by big earners isn't nearly as plebeian as this scheme. They manipulate the market in ways the SEC can't immediately or legally act on. Fake news sites are the domain of unsuccessful day traders.