After Cracked's article this morning, I was reading about
this guy. He'd buy penny stocks, and then go online and tout them to everybody encouraging them to buy, then he'd sell his. I don't get how this is illegal. I get that he was artificially inflating the value of the stocks, but he wasn't doing anything to accomplish that other than telling people they should buy them. I see no fraud in any of that. Frankly, it should be up to the consumer to do diligent research and not buy penny stocks because some kid on the internet tells them to. If we're to start prosecuting people for telling people a product is better than it is, then wouldn't that make every single person in commissioned sales a criminal?
Anybody want to help me understand this better?