The Make Money Fast Hall of Humiliation

For these four Pump & Dumpers, the fat lady has sung:

September 10, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Federal authorities announced last week that members of a "pump-and-dump" spam group that bilked more than $20 million from naïve, overeager investors have all pleaded guilty.

Starting in 2004, Michael Saquella, a.k.a. Michael Paloma, 47, of Mesa, Ariz.; Lawrence Kaplan, 63, of Scottsdale, Ariz.; Henry Zemla, 38, of Harris Township, Mich.; and Justin Medlin, 26, of Paris, France, hustled investors by convincing owners of 15 small corporations to turn over large chunks of those firms' penny stocks after promising that they could take the companies public. They then e-mailed fraudulent press releases to drive interest in the companies' stocks, create artificial demand and drive up share prices. Medlin was one of several spammers hired by Saquella, Kaplan, and Zemla to push the stocks.

Hopefully, this will serve pour encourager les autres.