- Are you the kind of person to grab some financial advice from influencers on Twitter? If so, how many times have you heard the words "this is not financial advice, but"? Well, eight finance pros known for recommending stocks for their legions of followers to buy are now up on federal indictment. These accounts were allegedly driving their fans to purchase stocks. And when the price was high enough, the influencers would sell their own shares at a profit.

All in all, these allegations are a classic pump and dump scheme, though in this case, the Department of Justice said the influencers racked up over $114 million in profits over two years thanks to the gullibility of their fans. The SEC has also filed charges against the finance bros, alleging a massive securities fraud scheme.

Who are some of these accounts? Well, you have folks like Ed Constantinescu, a.k.a. MrZackMorris, with close to 550,000 followers, and John Rybarczyk, or Ultra_Calls, with over 266,000 followers. Feds also alleged that the account DipDeity, or Daniel Night, used his "finance bro" podcast to promote the overall scam.

What makes this even crazier is just what conversations these influencers were having with each other over Discord that explicitly mentioned their fraud. The alleged scammers were apparently recorded, even though they thought their line was secure. The indictment included such gems as "We're robbing [BLEEP] idiots of their money" and "They have this [BLEEP] down to a [BLEEP] science. It's great."

If you dare spend time on these accounts, you'll be greeted with a whole load of inane "dudebro" language, alongside all the talk of stocks. It goes to show those message of "this is not financial advice, bruh," really don't mean anything. Really, users should be more than wary taking advice from folks online who love to show off their wealth with expensive cars, chains, or watches. A good rule of thumb-- if a flashy grifter wants you to know you can be as rich as them, then there's probably a lot of folks they fooled to get there.

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