Canadian regulators are looking into an apparent financial scam in which hackers cleaned out online brokerage accounts and used the money to buy over-the-counter penny stocks.

The Investment Dealers Association, the self-regulatory arm of Canada’s securities industry, said accounts at as many as four brokers have been attacked in what appears to be a modern twist on the traditional “pump and dump”, in which a cheap stock is fraudulently bid up to create artificial demand, then sold for a profit.

While the amounts stolen were relatively small — in the tens of thousands of dollars — the IDA says it’s the first instance they’ve seen of online brokers falling victim to “phishing”, or the use of e-mails purported to be from the broker to extract clients’ account information.

Source: Reuters