Penny Stock ‘Scams’ Now 16 Percent OF All Unwanted Email

Published onMay 28, 2014

Updated on May 13, 2021

The Securities and Exchange Commission has been cracking down on boiler rooms like the ones portrayed in The Wolf of Wall Street, but the combination of high risk and a low stock price is still too tempting for many people to resist and scammers are evolving their tactics. Spam email touting penny stocks jumped from less than 1% of unwanted email in 2012 to 16% last year, replacing the hard sale cold calls that pump and dump schemes are best known for, reports Priya Anand for MarketWatch.