The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged eight individuals with a $100 million securities fraud scheme involving major social media platforms, Twitter and Discord.

Seven of the defendants reportedly promoted themselves as successful traders on the social media platforms and encouraged their followers to buy selected stocks by posting targets and updates on their own positions. However, when share prices and/or trading volumes increased, the defendants allegedly sold their shares without disclosing their intentions, resulting in fraudulent profits of around $100 million.

“As our complaint states, the defendants used social media to amass a large following of novice investors and then took advantage of their followers by repeatedly feeding them a steady diet of misinformation, which resulted in fraudulent profits of approximately $100 million.”