Interim CEO Jack Dorsey | Courtesy Twitter
A fake news story, attributed to Bloomberg News, caused Twitter’s stock price to soar more than eight percent. The news story, which has since been deleted, claimed that Twitter had several potential buyers looking to make a purchase. Rumors of a purchase have been floated the past few weeks, especially after CEO Dick Costello resigned.
The report caused Twitter’s stock price to spike and CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla tweeted about it. Ty Trippet, head of communications for Bloomberg, attempted to set the record straight on Twitter and alerted Quintanilla about the hoax.
@carlquintanilla This is a fake story. Not a Bloomberg story (Note it says http://t.co/RUbdSj7MH8 not http://t.co/O4ern7Sc41)
— Ty Trippet (@ttrippet) July 14, 2015
The hoax was hosted on Bloomberg.market, instead of Bloomberg’s bloomberg.com. The URL was registered to a PO box in Panama last week, according to the website, WHOIS.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is now looking into the hoax. It is possible that this could apply as criminal stock manipulation.