Beware if you've gotten a "breezy, intimate" voice mail message from a female caller with a hot stock tip who sounds like she's dialed the wrong number.
U.S. securities regulators said on Thursday it's the latest "pump and dump" stock scam and it's sweeping the country.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said it has received hundreds of complaints from investors nationwide about what it described as "answering machine wrong-number stock touts."
Voice mail messages are being left on answering machines coast-to-coast by female callers who sound like they believe they're talking to a girlfriend, the SEC said.
In the messages, the caller seems to confide "inside information she has learned from 'that hot stock exchange guy I'm dating,"' said the federal agency in a statement.
But regulators believe the voice mails are part of a "pump and dump" stock scam in which the callers try to get the voice mail recipients to buy the stock mentioned. That drives up the price of the stock. Then the scammers can sell the shares quickly at a profit, leaving the unwitting victims with losses.
Stock prices of companies mentioned in the calls have gone up, said SEC Investor Education Director Susan Wyderko.
"But in all 'pump and dump' schemes, as soon as the promoter stops touting a stock, the price plummets and other investors lose their money," Wyderko said in a statement.
