Woman Says She Lost NIS 800,000 in a WhatsApp Stock Pump Scheme
A 24-year-old woman from central Israel, identified only as S', says she lost NIS 800,000 in just four minutes after being drawn into what appears to have been a stock manipulation scheme run through a WhatsApp group. She told the Israeli outlet that she had never heard of a “pump-and-dump” scam before and only understood what happened afterward.
The group, called “U.S. Stocks Community in Tel Aviv,” was formed in September 2024 and had hundreds of members. It described itself as offering educational content, news analysis, analyst recommendations, macro updates and stock analysis, in Hebrew that appeared machine-translated. S' said she was first attracted through a Facebook investment group and then moved to WhatsApp, where everything looked “professional and orderly.”
According to her account, she watched several trades succeed before committing larger sums. “In the fifth time I invested a bigger amount,” she said. “Within four minutes the stock fell by about 90%. It just collapsed. There was no way out.” The article says these groups often use an “if it works, it works” approach, adding members at random and relying on a small share to invest. The alleged method is the classic pump-and-dump model, targeting low-volume small-cap stocks and selling after prices are driven up.
The stock at the center of the group’s activity was NetClass Technology, ticker NTCL, a Singapore-based Nasdaq-listed education and software company. On the evening of June 5, a manager who called himself “David” wrote that the group would begin a “super-500% investment plan” the following week. In May, NTCL trading volume spiked as high as $160 million a day, about 32 times its annual average. The stock rose to $2.90 on June 10 after climbing roughly 900% in 10 days, then plunged almost 90% on June 11 to about 34 cents.
The group also urged members to prepare for trading, remove restrictions on their brokerage accounts, raise available cash, and sell other holdings including gold, stocks and funds. It claimed the stock could rise from around 30 cents to $9 and later said it could reach $9 from about $2. The article says similar attempts were also made with Concorde International Group, another Singapore-based Nasdaq stock. S' said she lost the money she had worked hard for, and the Israel Securities Authority is trying, together with foreign regulators and law enforcement, to curb such schemes, though they continue through social media and messaging apps.
