Head of hacker-powered stock scam sent to prison
A US man was sent to prison on Monday for orchestrating a hacker-powered scam to pump up stock prices and then dump inflated shares, raking in millions of dollars.
Christopher Rad, a 44-year-old Texas resident, was described by prosecutors as the organizer of a worldwide conspiracy to cash in by using an army of virus-infected computers to manipulate stock prices.
A US federal court judge sentenced Rad to five years in prison and ordered him to pay a $30,000 fine, with restitution to be determined at a later date, according to US attorney Paul Fishman. "Christopher Rad's use of hackers to drive his pump-and-dump scheme illustrates a trend toward the modern mechanization of old-school scams," Fishman said.
