Hackers Zero In on Online Stock Accounts - washingtonpost.com
Hackers Zero In on Online Stock Accounts - washingtonpost.com: "Stark said perpetrators are breaking into customer accounts and buying shares of thinly traded, microcap securities, also known as penny stocks. The hacker gains access using the customer's user name and password, then liquidates that person's existing stock holdings and uses the proceeds to buy shares in the microcap. The goal, regulators said, is to boost the price of a stock the hacker has already bought at a lower price in another account. The hacker then liquidates the stock and wires the money either to an offshore account or through a series of straw men, or dummy corporations, Stark said. The straw man may not know he is participating in fraud; he may have been told he is helping, say, an offshore business.
The entire operation can take a matter of minutes, or at most, hours.
'The unwitting victim opens the account in the morning and finds he or she owns thousands of shares in a microcap company that they have never heard of,' Stark said."
