by By Tyler Morrison
The Covid lockdowns left most people across the United States with more time than they knew what to do with. With Covid19 causing the stock market to collapse many individuals looked to start investing or trading the stock market. This can be represented by the record number of new signups on brokerage accounts (most of these being on a mobile device). This financial renaissance presented many positives as people became more financially literate and started investing. However, this new presence of traders and investors was a gold mine for those looking to scam ignorant people out of their money using social media.
Countless people across social media stated branding and selling themselves as “professional traders” or “stock furus”. The frightening thing about this is that it worked. These social media influencers would rent luxury items such as Lamborghinis and watches to flaunt on social media. Once these influencers have built their brand of “success” to a high enough following they create a course. They then sell this course to their followers (usually being subscription based) to continue to fund their lavish lifestyles.
One of the biggest instances of this type of scam was a group known as Atlas Trading. Atlas Trading started as a discord room that provided education, tips, and advice regarding the stock market. The best part was it was free. New investors flocked to Atlas to learn how to trade and about the stock market. The leaders of Atlas each had their own personal aliases on Twitter. For example one of the leaders of this group went by the alias @MrZackMorris. Zack Morris got so big at one point reaching over 500,000 followers. They would use these Twitter profiles to tweet stock picks to their followers, flex materialistic things (such as cars, money, vacations), and build their brand.
Now you may be asking what exactly they do that was illegal? Leaders of Atlas would message amongst themselves, buying shares of a stock up before alerting their followers. Once they loaded up the boat they would share their picks over Twitter and Discord. Members once alerted would buy then buy the stock causing it to go up. The leaders of Atlas would then sell their shares to their followers. What this meant is Atlas leaders were profiting at the expense of their followers.
The Atlas group profited more than 100 million dollars from the stock market. The only tool he used to build this brand was social media. This situation represents the power social media holds as a platform. It also caused the question to be raised of how powerful somebody could become just off of social media. With technology like AI only getting more powerful more and more dangerous possibilities emerge.
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