Surprisingly enough, the matter relates not to U.S. stocks, but to Chinese ones.  U.S. Attorney Stephen Mayfield told the AP that "Ralsky and the other defendants sent tens of millions of e-mail messages to computers worldwide, trying to inflate prices for Chinese penny stocks.  The defendants then sold the stocks at inflated prices."

In any event, legal problems are hardly new to Ralsky; aside from "See also" and "External links," the remaining two sections of his Wikipedia bio are titled "Spamming" and "Legal."  Ralsky is not about to win any public service awards.

Unless, that is, he does some exceptional charity work as part of a plea bargain or sentence.  The AP reports, "Conviction on the most serious charges, mail fraud and wire fraud, carries as many as 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. . . .  The government also seeks forfeiture of real estate, brokerage accounts, bank accounts and life insurance policies worth a combined $2.7 million."

We’ll see what happens, then; unless the 52-year-old Ralsky has some great lawyers, he might well spend the rest of his life sitting in a cell or picking up trash.