- guardian.co.uk, Monday October 23 2000 17.34 BST
A 16-year-old American who made hundreds of thousands of dollars by using internet bulletin boards to manipulate the price of shares he owned has said he does not think there is anything wrong with the practice.
Jonathan Lebed, who lives in New Jersey, bought his parents a $40,000 Mercedes car after surrendering $285,000 in profits from the scam and promising the securities and exchange commission that he would not do it again.
Jonathan, who is not old enough to smoke or drive legally, earlier this year became the youngest person to be charged with illegal stock dealing. Last month he agreed to hand over $285,000 to the SEC to settle civil charges that he fraudulently committed stock deals that netted him about $800,000 over a two-year period.
"Yes [I manipulated stocks], but I wasn't doing anything wrong ... I wasn't posting any false information," Jonathan told CBS's 60 Minutes in his first interview last night.
Jonathan told the programme how he made a fortune from "pumping and dumping" shares. That involves buying a stock, tipping it in internet chat rooms and selling when the price rises.
However, he said he was merely highlighting a number of undervalued companies "that would be worth a lot more if everybody knew about it".
SEC chairman Arthur Levitt saw it differently. Jonathan, he said, "used fictitious names. The purpose... was not to help investors... but rather to line his own pockets as soon as he hyped the price of the stock."
Jonathan's father Greg was proud of his son's gains. "He earned it. He did a lot of work. He didn't sit behind a garage smoking pot, or stealing wheels off a car."
