Securities Fraud and the Internet: Adapting Existing Regulatory Schemes to Regulation in Cyberspace

On 6th September, 2000 the SEC issued a press release accusing 33 companies and individuals of fraudulently using the Internet to make more than $10m in illegal profits by driving up the prices of more than 70 small stocks. The companies and individuals, including a bus mechanic, a car service driver and a self‐chilling can company, boosted the total market value of these stocks by $1.7bn, claimed the SEC, in announcing 11 civil fraud lawsuits filed in federal courts. ‘What used to require a network of professional promoters and brokers, banks of telephones and months to accomplish can now be done in minutes by a single person using the Internet and a home computer,’ SEC enforcement director Richard H. Walker said. Two weeks later, the SEC announced that it had settled an enforcement proceeding brought against a 15‐year‐old stock trader who, operating from a computer in a bedroom in his parents' home, had earned more than $270,000 in profits over a six‐month period by engaging in classic ‘pump and dump’ market manipulation of small over‐the‐counter stocks.