A federal judge has dismissed a criminal indictment against seven Twitter users and a podcaster accused of running a $100 million stock manipulation scheme over social media.
The Justice Department did not do enough to describe the influencers’ activities as a “scheme to defraud,” wrote District Judge Andrew Hanen of the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas, in an order dated Wednesday. In the indictment, the DOJ had alleged a lucrative “pump and dump” scheme in which the social media influencers used the messaging app Discord to promote certain stocks to their followers before selling their positions after a run-up in the stocks’ prices.
“The key question is whether one statement by one of the co-defendants that ‘we’re robbing … idiots of their money,’ which is alleged in the Indictment, is sufficient,” the judge wrote. “This statement sufficiently alleges ‘intent to defraud’ … but does not on its own sufficiently allege that Defendants executed, or conspired to execute, a ‘scheme to defraud’ investors of money or property” as defined by court precedent.
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