14 DAY TRIAL // A lot of users have received a huge amount of junk-mail, promoting share acquisition from the Prime Time Group Inc. Apparently, there is no way the company could be associated with the spamming process, and they are looking into this matter themselves, in order to see who has done it.
The scheme that the hackers had used is a classical one. First, they went and infected some computers and turned them into mailer-zombies. After that has been done, they created the typical spam scam e-mail, that was meant to persuade the receiver into buying shares at the company. Prime Time Group Inc. had its shares rise 60 percent after the spam campaign has ended.
Many companies decide to use junk-mail to increase their shares' value or customers' numbers and some are being charged for it, but - as Sophos experts have stated - the Prime Time case is different: this spam campaign is huge and very efficient (probably done by experienced cyber-criminals), since whoever did it was using PDF files to carry out the spam for them, to pass by spam guards.
The company whose shares have been bought is selling wireless gadgets and also runs a pack of convenience stores. The ones that did this are probably trying to make nice cash by fooling gullible investors. Their tactic is first to buy shares from the company, then make others buy more and more, until their prices grow. Then, when shares have reached the peak price, they simply sell theirs and cash in. That's one way of turning a few dollars into thousands, without working too hard. Sure, for all this to work, you need to find the people that would buy these shares - and what better way to do this than spam scam?
The worst part about this is the fact that some people have paid a lot of money for shares that aren't worth that much. Generally, after most of the 'victims' figure out that all this is a scam, they start selling, and shares drop.