Weight loss spam returns to overtake new pump and dump scams
August 18, 2013
Last week, I wrote two articles (1 - 2) that revealed that the amount of spam for green coffee bean extract had been surpassed by a big pump and dump campaign, which was pushing two different stocks. Now, the pattern has reversed and weight loss spam exceeds pump and dump.
Regarding the weight loss scams; they no longer mention green coffee bean extract in the spam message bodies. You find this out if you click on the links, which have also morphed from Polish domains (.pl) to Russian domains (.ru). The rest is the same stuff, using Russian underground affiliate template web pages, hosted on Russian web domains. Most of the diet scams I saw this week are spoofing Dr. Oz as the sender, using a couple of different spellings. The message bodies even claim to be official Dr. Oz newsletters, which they are NOT! All of the details are bogus, as is the diet formula they promote.
Note: I researched Green Coffee Bean Extract and found reports on real forums (like WebMD) where most of the people using it got sick from it, until they stopped taking those capsules. The only weight loss was from vomiting, etc.
Pump and Dump
The new pump and dump scam emerging over the last few days is a scam promoting a stock with the symbol MONK. The two previous campaigns seem to be mostly abandoned, after they failed to make the expected profits for the scammers running this dog and pony show. If you are smart, when you see emails promoting MONK, with or without underscores and/or spaces between the capitalized letters, don't be fooled into thinking they are legit. They are scams, run by professional con men, all of whom have conspired to purchase large volumes of shares in the penny stocks they pump up.
As always, the goal of a pump and dump campaign is to pump up interest in a stock, using botnet sent spam messages, driving up the volume of transactions and the value per share. When the value reaches an agreed-upon price, the scammers all sell off their shares, turning a profit for themselves, at the expense of everybody else whom they suckered in.
Today's take-away
1: Green coffee beans won't help you lose weight, but will sicken you and lighten your wallet.
2: Getting involved with a pump and dump stock scam will lighten your bank account when it fails. Further, these are Ponzi Scams, under US law.
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