The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged a 30-year-old Greek man with securities fraud and money laundering for allegedly selling insider trading tips on various Dark Web marketplaces.
Between December 2016 and this February, the SEC says Apostolos Trovias, who used the screen name âThe Bull,â claimed to be âan actual office clerk working in a trading branchâ and sold stock tips to buyers through monthly and weekly subscriptions as well as one-off sales. Trovias also occasionally sold unpublished earnings reports for public companies.
Trovias used several Dark Web marketplaces to hawk his wares, including the now-defunct AlphaBay, Dream Market, Nightmare Market, and ASAP Market. Trovias also created his own website to sell subscriptions to his âtips.â
All of Troviasâ sales were payable in bitcoin, which the SECâs complaint says was used to hide and anonymize his âinsider trading scheme.â
It is still unclear whether the purported stock tips Trovias was selling to his customers were based on real non-public information obtained from a âthird party tipper,â or whether Trovias simply made them up.