Fiber Optic Technology, but have also fallen prey to massive investment scams.

In July 2018, this trend continued with the arrest of real estate developer Dennis Lam, for a $78 million investment scam.

Online equity trading is an alternative vehicle of investment fraud and according to a New York City-based study by the law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, 49% of investors in the study who had lost money due to fake traders said they had lost money due to "fake traders" or "fraudsters", versus just 12% of those who lost money through conventional investments.

According to "Investopedia",

A lack of regulation leads to fraudulent operators, and because online trading has almost no legal protections, sophisticated operators can prey on inexperienced, lazy investors.

According to the US Attorney,

Cyber criminals use illegal online trading firms to lure unsuspecting investors into buying up huge numbers of stocks and fund from the sham proceeds.

This can involve "robosigning" documents that indicate that a trading platform is authorized to trade in a company's stock, and may involve sending out boilerplate emails purporting to represent the firm to lure investors into a false sense of security.

Although many stocks have legitimate and profitable underlying business, legitimate operators can also have incentives to disguise what is a thinly disguised scam.

An example is the Ponzi scheme involving Californian broker Brian D. Stoker, who defrauded more than 7,000 investors of more than $500 million.

Online traders can also be "bulls" or "bears" who go in for short-term speculation and take positions in stocks for short periods of time with a view to either profiting from a stock price rise, or to selling when the price declines and at the moment of greater pessimism, then going long.

Then, when a positive move is made, the seller reverses direction to make a quick profit on their short position.

Bulls and bears are different from professional traders, who are more measured and take a longer view, but both have the same modus operandi – buying high, then selling at the time of extreme pessimism.

An example of an internet trader who used both sides of this modus operandi was Herman Fang, the man who duped writer G.P.


Putnam and many others on the internet.

The FTC wrote a report on cyberbullying in July 2013 that detailed the various means cyberbullies use to engage in their destructive practices and how law enforcement should use the internet to combat the bullies' actions.


There are a variety of forms of identity theft including the posting of hoax or malicious ads, phishing scams, illegal online gambling and the sale of counterfeit products.