Pump and dump securities fraud

Brattle advised and provided testimony in US v Galanis, a case involving an alleged $20 million pump-and-dump securities fraud scheme. Our team analyzed allegations that the defendant instructed a third party to engage in manipulative trading to prop up the share price of the company during periods when shares were being sold for the defendant’s benefit. This involved developing the cell phone data and data on the trading activity of the third party. We compared the timing of calls over several months with the timing of trading activity in the relevant security. In addition, we computed the correlation in the daily call and trade activity of the parties and determined that the correlation was statistically significant.