that they were part of a $100 million scheme to use social media platforms Twitter and Discord, as well as podcasts, to manipulate the price of certain stocks.
One person, Daniel Knight, who goes by the online handle “DipDeity,” was charged with “aiding and abetting the alleged scheme” after co-hosting a podcast that promoted the other defendants, the SEC said. Discord is a private chatroom and messaging platform that is popular with gaming influencers and, more recently, financial influencers. One Discord chat in particular, Atlas Trading, which as of Wednesday morning had more than 233,000 members, allegedly served as a primary forum for the scheme. According to the SEC, seven of the defendants promoted stocks to their hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers and in stock trading rooms on Discord since at least January 2020.