Matthew Goldstein, Dealbook, The New York Times, July 21, 2015

A huge computer attack against JPMorgan Chase last summer may have been more of an attempt to fuel an ongoing pump-and-dump stock scheme rather than an effort to steal financial data from the nation’s biggest bank. Federal authorities on Tuesday announced the arrest of four men in Florida and Israel in connection with a series of fraudulent investment schemes involving penny stocks and Bitcoin that spanned the globe, from Florida to New York to Israel to Cyprus and Russia. But authorities also suspect that some of the men arrested, along with a fifth man charged but still at large, had a hand in last summer’s hacking at JPMorgan that compromised the contact information for 83 million of the bank’s customers, according to people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. […read more]