US-based energy company Stonebridge Resources Exploration Ltd announced its listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on 1 March 2007 under the ticker symbol S3C.
Yesterday, SophosLabs experts identified an active spam campaign encouraging German investors to buy shares in the company. The scam, known as a "pump-and-dump," works by spammers purchasing stock at a cheap price and then artificially inflating its price by encouraging others to purchase more (often by spamming "good news" or "investment tips" about the company to others). The spammers then sell off their stock at a profit.
"This is the first time we have seen a widespread spam campaign trying to influence a stock market based outside of the USA, and German language users may be at risk of losing money," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "We saw the price of this stock rise immediately after we intercepted the spam campaign, and there is a danger that some people may be fooled into investing in this firm for bogus reasons. It will be interesting to see if stock scammers, who have plagued North American-listed penny stocks for some time, will now turn more of their attention to European markets."
"Some people may be puzzled by the strange use of language in the second half of the e-mail. This is what our labs call 'spamglish' - a mixture of random English words used by spammers in an attempt to slip the e-mail past anti-spam filters," continued Cluley. "This is a classic spammer trick to try and avoid gateway defenses, but should help the human eye identify that the e-mail is far from legitimate."
Sophos's Security Threat Report 2007 revealed that pump-and-dump stock campaigns accounted for approximately 25 percent of all spam last year, up from 0.8 percent in January 2005.
Earlier this month, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suspended trading in 35 companies as they were found to be commonly referenced in pump-and-dump stock e-mail campaigns.
