What makes this scam different is that fraudsters get prospective victims to reply to the message with “YES” or “INTERESTED” instead of convincing them to click a link. This new scam is intended to reach people who know about the risks of clicking on links in unsolicited messages. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) of the Office of Inspector General is warning investors about a new version of a pump and dump investment fraud scheme called “ramp and dump.” There are two types of ramp and dump schemes. In the first type, which is similar to the traditional pump and dump scheme, Chinese and other small businesses outside the U.S. valued at $15 million or less will develop and list an initial public offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ stock exchange with an individual share price of $4–6. Before the IPO is listed, the fraudsters allocate millions of shares to themselves at a small cost or no cost. Then they’ll make fraudulent claims about the value of the shares of the upcoming IPO and encourage victim investors through encrypted messaging service WhatsApp to purchase shares at a specific time on the day the IPO is listed. The fraudsters then sell their shares at an inflated value, resulting in a 100% profit or more. In the second type of ramp and dump scheme, fraudsters embed malware on a victim’s computer to steal their identity and purchase shares of small cap stocks. Once the malware is successfully embedded, the fraudster can gain access to the victim’s PII, including passwords, multifactor authentication and usernames. The fraudster’s main goal is to infiltrate the victim’s brokerage account and use it to purchase small cap stocks, while profiting from match sales from the accounts the bad actors now control. According to the FDIC, the fraudsters use stock transfer and clearing agents with a low threshold for compliance and conduct minimal trade surveillance. Source: https://www.acfe.com/fraud-magazine/all-issues/issue/article?s=2026-mayjun-job-scam-text-messages