https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/ Every correction logged on this site: the date, what was wrong and what changed. en-us Sat, 03 Oct 2026 01:22:53 GMT https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-10-02-audit--1053-of-2436-records-now-checked-against-their-primary-documents 2026-10-02-1-053-of-2-436-records-now-checked-against-their-primary-documents Affected: the case records for eight technique groups: paid stock promotion, wash trading and matched orders, boiler rooms with fake press releases and newsletter scalping, unregistered distributions, insider trading, pump and dump with price manipulation, spoofing and layering, and Ponzi schemes. Each group's findings are in the separate entries that follow. What was read. Each record was opened and compared with its primary document. Paid stock promotion: 129 of 129 records read, 64 (50%) carried a tag the document did not support. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT audit https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-10-02-removal--five-cftc-annual-results-summaries-deleted-from-the-case-library 2026-10-02-five-cftc-annual-results-summaries-deleted-from-the-case-library Affected: five records, each the CFTC's annual enforcement-results announcement for fiscal 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 or 2017. They had been filed under respondent-style names (for example "MF Global" and "Navinder Sarao") although each announcement summarises many unrelated actions and names no respondent. What was wrong. A summary of a whole year's enforcement is not an action against anyone. The records carried one respondent's name in their address and, before the audit, aggregate dollar figures from the whole year. What changed. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT removal https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-10-02-statistics--counts-and-charts-in-thirteen-posts-and-five-technique-pages-recomputed-after-the-audit-124-case-titles-and-91-filing-dates-corrected 2026-10-02-counts-and-charts-in-thirteen-posts-and-five-technique-pages-recomputed-after-th Affected: Spoofing enforcement since 2015, charted, What the enforcement record is made of, Pump and dump has moved to Telegram, Eleven records, one chat group pump, Fourteen front-running records, Nine of twenty-five churning records, Reverse merger gatekeepers, the Hunt brothers, celebrity touting, mismarking, hack-to-trade, short-selling and Rule 105 posts, and the technique pages for analyst manipulation, hack to trade, mismarking, Rule 105 offering shorts and sham tender offers. Why. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT statistics https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-10-02-source-check--paid-stock-promotion-64-of-129-records-did-not-describe-undisclosed-paid-promotion 2026-10-02-paid-stock-promotion-64-of-129-records-did-not-describe-undisclosed-paid-promoti Affected: 129 records read; 64 retagged. Among them Esposito (2016-18), Carnovale (2021-24), Stubos, Moynes, Abujudeh, Aegis Capital, Wilson-Davis and Matin. Wrong tag. Records said "paid stock promotion" because a release mentions promoters. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-10-02-source-check--53-of-132-wash-trading-and-matched-orders-records-described-a-different-matter-and-eleven-more-had-the-two-techniques-swapped 2026-10-02-53-of-132-wash-trading-and-matched-orders-records-described-a-different-matter-a Affected: 132 records read; 64 retagged or detagged. Among them Betterment, Wealthfront, Honeywell, Pyxus, Wells Fargo Advisors, optionsXpress, Wedbush, Daniel Fingerhut, Gregg Smith and Coinsquare. Compliance mentions. Six suspicious-activity-report failure orders (Archipelago, Canaccord, Lightspeed, OTC Link, Paulson, SpeedRoute), Wedbush's market-access order and the OSC RBC/TD foreign-exchange-controls settlements named wash trading only as a red flag. Openmarkets is a surveillance failure. Tags removed. Not market conduct. "Wash sale" in Betterment and Wealthfront is the tax rule. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-10-02-source-check--boiler-rooms-fake-press-releases-and-newsletter-scalping-18-of-106-records-carried-the-wrong-tag-20-a-wrong-money-figure-and-61-a-truncated-or-split-defendant-name 2026-10-02-boiler-rooms-fake-press-releases-and-newsletter-scalping-18-of-106-records-carri Affected: 106 records read. Among those retagged or corrected: CFTC fiscal 2014 results summary (deleted), Guarino, Sterling Grace and Casale, McDuff, Anglim, Turbo Global, Fisher Capital, International Enterprise, Advanced Trading Workshop, Deutsche Bank Securities, Mizuho and Oxford City (2015). Bystander mentions. MF Global is an annual-results roundup. The documents for Guarino, Casale, McDuff and Anglim mention boiler rooms only as the respondent's history or someone else's conduct; Turbo Global's order recalls a 1999 boiler-room case. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-10-02-source-check--unregistered-distributions-21-of-160-records-carried-the-tag-without-a-section-5-finding-and-many-carried-the-wrong-money-status-or-names 2026-10-02-unregistered-distributions-21-of-160-records-carried-the-tag-without-a-section-5 Affected: 160 records read; the tag was removed from 21. Among them OTC Link, Cambria Capital, COR Clearing, Chardan, Advanced Cell, Sheehan, Coldicutt, Emrich; status and money fixes include Lexington/Pierce, Sason, Dobrovodsky and Bandimere. Bystander mention, not a Section 5 charge. OTC Link, Cambria, COR, Chardan and Basmagy are suspicious-activity-report failures; "unregistered distribution" is a red flag in the firm's own compliance policy. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-10-02-source-check--insider-trading-in-a-sample-of-about-150-of-725-records-wrong-tags-and-wrong-outcomes-were-common-and-over-half-of-the-high-risk-ones-were-the-wrong-matter 2026-10-02-insider-trading-in-a-sample-of-about-150-of-725-records-wrong-tags-and-wrong-out Affected: about 150 of 725 records read (a sample, not the full group); 44 retagged. Among them Cochran, Horsey, Bermingham, Mathew, Dhanani, Royal Bank of Canada, Charter, Zilkha, Wells Fargo Advisors, S.A.C. Capital Advisors, Artis and Matthew Clark. Boilerplate and policy mentions. Four FCA prohibition notices carried the tag only because standard guidance lists "insider dealing"; the conduct is sexual assault, voyeurism, and EURIBOR and LIBOR fixing. RBC's tribunal settlement lists front running, layering and wash trades as guidance only, and Staff alleged none of them. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-10-02-source-check--pump-and-dump-and-price-manipulation-25-records-carried-a-tag-the-document-does-not-support-and-many-carried-another-defendants-figures-or-no-real-defendant-name 2026-10-02-pump-and-dump-and-price-manipulation-25-records-carried-a-tag-the-document-does- Affected: 217 records read (111 of 125 pump-and-dump and 109 of 131 price-manipulation, with three in both); 49 retagged. Among them Aegis Capital, Albert Fried, Wilson-Davis, Canaccord Genuity LLC, Vandham, Einstein Investments, Proctor, Mulholland, Brian Hunter, Adam Flavin, Jaberian and Glencore. AML failures tagged pump and dump. Aegis, Albert Fried, Wilson-Davis, Canaccord ($20 million), SpeedRoute and Vandham are suspicious-activity-report cases; pump and dump, spoofing or wash sales appear only as red flags the firm failed to report. Tags removed (Vandham keeps naked short selling). Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-10-02-source-check--36-records-tagged-spoofing-or-layering-were-not-spoofing-or-layering-and-36-carried-wrong-money 2026-10-02-36-records-tagged-spoofing-or-layering-were-not-spoofing-or-layering-and-36-carr Affected: 128 records read; 36 retagged. Among them CFTC FY2016 results summary (deleted), FY2017 results summary (deleted), FY2019 report, FY2020 record year, ANZ, Tillage, Giltman, Sotnikov 2020, Cetera, Archipelago, Royal Bank of Canada and JPMorgan (CFTC). "Spoofed" meant something else. Annual-results releases and a director's departure mention spoofing only in passing. Giltman and Sotnikov concern fake-CD websites that imitated banks. Cambridge, Cetera, KMS and M Holdings are customer-information safeguards cases with a footnote defining a "spoofed" phishing email. Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-10-02-source-check--ponzi-schemes-of-147-records-read-20-carried-a-tag-the-document-does-not-support-12-were-wrongly-dismissed-and-47-had-wrong-money 2026-10-02-ponzi-schemes-of-147-records-read-20-carried-a-tag-the-document-does-not-support Affected: 147 of 602 records read (a sample, not the full group). Among those corrected: Bradon Technologies, Solar Income Fund, Paramount Equity, Nova Tech, Feng, TD Bank, BOKF, Morgan Stanley, Palmer and Bandimere. Bystander tags removed (20). Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-09-29-source-check--a-reverse-merger-tag-applied-to-a-gun-jumping-case-and-two-defendant-names-spliced-together 2026-09-29-a-reverse-merger-tag-applied-to-a-gun-jumping-case-and-two-defendant-names-splic Affected: the case records for Canaccord Genuity Inc. and Delaney Equity Group LLC, David Delaney and Ian Kass; found while fact-checking a new blog post against the 59 records tagged reverse merger schemes. Wrong tag, Canaccord. The order's only mention of a reverse merger is a single background sentence — the unnamed issuer "completed a reverse merger with another company" in December 2011, two years before the conduct actually charged. Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-09-29-source-check--nine-of-25-churning-records-describe-something-else-and-two-carry-a-misattributed-dollar-figure 2026-09-29-nine-of-25-churning-records-describe-something-else-and-two-carry-a-misattribute Affected: the case records for NPA Asset Management, Royal Alliance Associates, SagePoint Financial and FSC Securities, Waddell & Reed, Canterbury Consulting, Bennett Group Financial Services and Dawn Bennett, William Quigley, Carla Lea Chastain, American Portfolios Financial Services and American Portfolios Advisors, FCA v. Edward Booth, and William C. Gennity and Rocco Roveccio (2018); found while fact-checking a new blog post against all 25 records tagged churning. Reverse churning, not churning. Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-09-29-source-check--six-front-running-records-checked-against-their-primary-document-five-mistagged-one-records-a-conviction-as-a-dismissal 2026-09-29-six-front-running-records-checked-against-their-primary-document-five-mistagged- Affected: the case records for Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Mizuho Securities USA, ASIC v. UBS Securities, Judy K. Wolf, Sean Wygovsky and Christopher Matthaei and Sergei Polevikov, et al.; found while fact-checking a new blog post against all 14 records tagged front running. Boilerplate mistags. Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-09-29-source-check--ten-of-eleven-records-tagged-chat-group-pumps-were-the-wrong-matter-and-the-keyword-rule-that-produced-them-fired-on-the-bare-mention-of-a-messaging-platform 2026-09-29-ten-of-eleven-records-tagged-chat-group-pumps-were-the-wrong-matter-and-the-keyw Affected: the case records for BarnBridge DAO, Tyler Ward and Troy Murray, Flyfish Club, LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Ontario Securities Commission v. Blockratize Inc., Jean-Noël Yves Alba, and both NanoBit records (2024, 2026); the chat group pumps technique page. The error. The keyword rule matched the bare terms "telegram group", "discord server", "chat room pump" and "whatsapp group" anywhere in a release, with no requirement that the group be the mechanism of a pump. Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-09-20-technique-recovery--three-techniques-had-no-records-although-the-cache-held-their-cases 2026-09-20-three-techniques-had-no-records-although-the-cache-held-their-cases Affected: the EDGAR filing fraud, social media ramps and short and distort technique pages; What the enforcement record is made of; Is short selling manipulation?; Pump and dump has moved to Telegram; and the counts in Spoofing enforcement since 2015, charted. What was wrong. Fourteen of 58 techniques had no record. For three of them the fault was ours: the keyword rules did not match documents the library already held. Nothing was missing from the sources. What changed. Sun, 20 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT technique recovery https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-09-20-record-fixes--garbled-respondent-names-one-record-describing-another-defendants-plea-mixed-money-figures-and-filing-dates 2026-09-20-garbled-respondent-names-one-record-describing-another-defendant-s-plea-mixed-mo Affected: about 30 case records, chiefly under the hack to trade, Rule 105 offering shorts, sham tender offers, hijacked account ramping and paid crypto market making techniques. Names and defendants. "Worldwide Capital, Inc. and and Jeffrey W. Lynn" and "Petrou and Thrasos Tommy" (the respondent is Thrasos Tommy Petrou alone) are corrected, as is the Genesis Advisory record. The Mohamed/Wong record, which held eighteen defendants as one garbled name, now lists all eighteen, the Northern District of Georgia and the release's "more than $1 million" gain. Sun, 20 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT record fixes https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-09-20-source-check--a-173-billion-hsbc-penalty-that-was-not-hsbcs-and-unsourced-claims-in-older-posts 2026-09-20-a-1-73-billion-hsbc-penalty-that-was-not-hsbc-s-and-unsourced-claims-in-older-po Affected: Hunt brothers and the silver corner, LIBOR and benchmark design, Spoofing enforcement since 2015, charted, The anatomy of a spoofing case and Pump and dump has moved to Telegram. HSBC $1.73 billion, wrong. The case record for the CFTC's HSBC "cash versus derivatives" matter draws on release 8822-23, which is the CFTC's fiscal 2023 enforcement results summary. That release states a $45 million penalty against HSBC Bank USA; the $1,733,838,372 figure it mentions belongs to a different case. The Hunt and LIBOR posts no longer cite it. Sun, 20 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT source check https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-09-20--our-own-repair-script-emptied-31-cftc-penalties-and-five-record-and-post-errors 2026-09-20-our-own-repair-script-emptied-31-cftc-penalties-and-five-record-and-post-errors Affected: 31 CFTC case records that showed no penalty from 2026-09-17 until today, including the matters against Glencore, Vitol, Navinder Sarao and five banks in the benchmark case; four further case records; and four older blog posts. The error. On 2026-09-17 we re-ran a repair script to fix a penalty-extraction bug (DECISIONS.md §22). For CFTC records the script re-read only the release body, but the CFTC source takes a penalty from the headline's "Pay $X" when the body states none. Sun, 20 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-09-10--100-accountants-and-attorneys-were-recorded-as-having-run-schemes-their-clients-ran 2026-09-10-100-accountants-and-attorneys-were-recorded-as-having-run-schemes-their-clients- Affected: 100 case records, most under the reverse merger schemes and undisclosed control blocks technique pages, naming accounting firms and attorneys including BDO USA, KPMG, Baker Tilly, Friedman LLP and named individual CPAs and lawyers. A further 21 records, mostly Rule 102(e) suspensions duplicating conduct already recorded from a separate litigation release, were also removed. The error. These were SEC Rule 102(e) orders — proceedings that bar an accountant or attorney from practising before the Commission. Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-09-09--the-touting-rule-was-still-wrong-and-95-records-carried-the-wrong-technique 2026-09-09-the-touting-rule-was-still-wrong-and-95-records-carried-the-wrong-technique Affected: the paid stock promotion technique page and every case that was tagged with it in error — 95 records, of which three were removed from the library entirely because promotion was the only technique they had been given. The error. The keyword rule for paid stock promotion matched the bare term "touting". It fired on any boast. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT https://marketmanipulation.org/corrections/#2026-09-08--a-case-was-described-as-stock-promotion-when-it-was-accounting-fraud 2026-09-08-a-case-was-described-as-stock-promotion-when-it-was-accounting-fraud Affected: Is short selling market manipulation? and Pump and dump has moved to Telegram. The error. Both posts cited SEC litigation release LR-25195 as a paid stock promotion action carrying a $62 million penalty. It is not a promotion case at all. It concerns accounting irregularities at a large food company, and our classifier had tagged it paid stock promotion because the release states that the company "touted" purported cost savings to the market — the word appearing in an accounting context rather than a promotional one. The cause. Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT