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Informist, Saturday, May 23, 2026

 

MUMBAI – Securities and Exchange Board of India has banned a family of financial influencers from the securities market over stock manipulation and using their influence on social media to carry out a 'pump and dump' strategy. The regulator also impounded INR 202.5 million illegally made by the influencers.

 

"They indulged in providing stock recommendations with the intent to artificially inflate the market price of the scrip thereby profiting in a total of 82 scrips during the examination period," SEBI said in an ex-parte interim order. "The noticees first built-up buy positions in a particular scrip and subsequently disseminated contents and recommendations on the X Accounts and other social media platforms operated by them. Once the price went up, noticees took contrary positions in their accounts and by selling shares made wrongful gains."

 

Hemant Gupta, his sons Rohan Gupta and Aniket Gupta, violated regulations and gave stock recommendations despite not being registered research analysts, SEBI said in the order. Further, Hemant Gupta's daughter Purvangi Gupta and wife Sharon Gupta, and ex-wife Rajani Gupta were also involved in the fraud. SEBI barred all the seven members of the family from the securities market and ordered Hemant Gupta and his sons to immediately stop giving stock recommendations.

 

The influencers mostly targeted small and medium-sized enterprise stocks, which are easier to manipulate. They bought shares of small companies in large quantity and promoted these on their social media handles, and WhatsApp and Telegram groups managed by them. Once the stock price rose after their recommendations, they would immediately sell the stock earning profits in millions.

 

What's more, these influencers continued to give stock recommendations despite being aware they were violating norms. Chats between the influencers showed they discussed toning down their recommending stocks and avoid using words such as "sureshot" and "multibagger". At one point, Aniket Gupta texted Hemant Gupta, "we have enough enemies & already complaints against us sent to SEBI by few ppl (people). If we come in their (SEBI) eyesight, we'll be in big trouble. Lifetime of earnings will be gone."

 

SEBI saw the need to issue an interim order to stop these influencers from giving more stock recommendations and protect investors. "...in order to prevent further abuse of market, restore market integrity and to secure wrongful gains, in the interest of the investing public and considering the scale of the liquidation of holdings by notices, a need for appropriate/urgent enforcement action is warranted to pass interim directions against noticees at this stage," the order said.

 

SEBI hopes this order would make investors aware of the risks of taking advice from unregistered advisors. "It is seen that such social media have been used as a mechanism to entice innocent investors to trade in securities. Therefore, it become imperative to educate investors so that they protect themselves from being lured by unregistered Investment Advisers and Research Analysts using the social media platform to deal in securities thus violating the securities market norms," the order said.  End

 

Reported by Anshul Choudhary

Edited by Vandana Hingorani

 

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