SEBI v. Himanshu Mahendrabhai Patel and others (Telegram stock recommendations, 2023)

Judgment entered

✓ Checked against the primary document on October 8, 2026. The library's summary, tags and figures for this record were compared with the regulator's own document by an AI model (Claude) following written instructions, in a single reading of the order; an independent second reading of 60 SEBI records agreed on every field for 56, the four misses being penalty amounts; a later sample of 50 of the SEBI records added on 9 October agreed on every field for 46. No lawyer has reviewed them. A checked record can still contain errors, and checked does not mean endorsed. See how we check records or report a correction.

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In April 2023 a SEBI whole-time member found that three administrators of the 49,000-subscriber Telegram channel Bull Run Investment Educational Channel bought stocks, recommended them without disclosing their position, and sold into the resulting demand, using family accounts too. SEBI ordered disgorgement of unlawful gains of about Rs 2.84 crore with interest, penalties of Rs 5.84 crore in total and market bans.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

58.4m INR

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars. This regulator states penalties in INR. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

This final order was issued on 26 April 2023 by Ananth Narayan G., a whole-time member of SEBI. It names six noticees. Himanshu Mahendrabhai Patel, Raj Mahendrabhai Patel and Jaydev Zala administered a Telegram channel called Bull Run Investment Educational Channel, with more than 49,000 subscribers. The other three noticees, Mahendrabhai Bechardas Patel, Kokilaben Mahendrabhai Patel and Avaniben Kirankumar Patel, are relatives whose trading accounts were used.

SEBI began after two complaints in 2021 and issued an interim ex parte order combined with a show cause notice in January 2022. It alleged that the administrators bought particular stocks through their own accounts and family members' accounts, posted buy recommendations on the channel without disclosing their own holdings or intention to sell, and then sold at inflated prices to followers, in breach of section 12A of the SEBI Act and the PFUTP Regulations. The relatives were alleged to have aided the scheme by letting their accounts be used.

The order finds the scheme established. It treats the investigation period as 1 January to 12 November 2021 and calculates the unlawful gains from trades in recommended scrips at Rs 2,84,29,948 in total. The noticees made no submissions on the trades or the gain calculation and brought forward no mitigating factors, according to the order.

The directions bar the three administrators from the securities market until three years after they pay the disgorgement, and the three relatives for one year after payment, with existing holdings frozen during the bar. All six must jointly and severally disgorge the gains with simple interest at 12 per cent a year from 12 November 2021; Rs 98,84,427.86 already sat in escrow, leaving Rs 1,85,45,520.14 plus interest. SEBI also fined the first three noticees Rs 5,68,59,896 jointly and severally, twice the gains, and each of the relatives Rs 5,00,000, so the penalties total Rs 5,83,59,896.

The order is an administrative sanction, not a criminal conviction, and the record shows no criminal case. It does not show whether the noticees appealed to the Securities Appellate Tribunal, whether the sums were paid, or how many followers actually lost money.

This library tags the matter as a social-media ramp, with elements of a pump-and-dump. The tagging is ours, not the regulator's.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above. This page deliberately summarises the structured record rather than reproducing the order.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with 2 techniques in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Social media ramps — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.
• Pump and dump — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2023-04-26 SEBI order

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• SEBI order
• Order (PDF)

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added October 8, 2026. submit a correction.