Are people really this stupid?  Really.  Are they this stupid?  This removes my faith in humanity.

A guy holds a large position in a thinly traded penny stock.  He uses nominees offshore to do it.  He then sends an email blast to 700,000 sheep, I mean “people”, touting the stock.  He apparently found a bunch of sheep, I mean “people”, who believe everything they receive in their inbox.

So a bunch of these sheep, having received this unsolicited email, think “Here’s a great idea.  Let’s buy this piece of crap thinly-traded stock because this email says great things about it.  And while I’m at it, I’ll buy some of those all natural male “enhancement” pills, too.”

So the POS stock increases in price and volume, giving the promoter/emailer/sheep fleecer a handy profit of over $1,000,000.  But the SEC caught wind of this plot and shut it down.  You can read what they did here.  Nice work by the SEC to protect the sheep from themselves.  But really, who believes these emails?  Remember the voicemail scam from a bunch of years ago?  A woman left a voicemail saying that her boyfriend gave her a hot stock tip that she’s not supposed to share.  The key was that the voicemail was supposedly for someone else.  That’s what made the tip sound legitimate.  You can read about one SEC enforcement action on phony voicemail tips here.

Folks, investing is not as easy as buying a stock you hear about in an unsolicited email or a misdirected voicemail.  But if you’re interested in a bridge….

That’s the view of one lawyer in Jupiter, Palm Beach County, Florida.  I’m Marc Dobin.