With all the cryptocurrency out there, there are a lot of pump and dump schemes happening.

For those that don’t know, a pump and dump is where a person or a group will buy up a lot of crypto at a low price. Then they will get together, blast out some posts or “news” that promises the cryptocurrency is about to explode. Others jump in and it drives the price up and the original investors then sell off their crypto at a high profit and leave the others facing huge losses.

Most of the pumps and dump’s happen on some internet board or a sketchy website.

Yesterday a press release was making the rounds claiming that Walmart was going to start accepting the cryptocurrency Litecoin.

The press release was bogus, but it fooled both Reuters and CNBC who ran stories on the fake release, driving the price of Litecoin even higher.

The scam worked to a “T” as you can see by the trading chart below, the big spike for Litecoin.

Billions of dollars of Litecoin changed hands and Walmart said that there was no truth to the story and that the company was not going to start accepting the crypto.

It was a classic pump and dump scam and CNBC helped spread the false news.

It never is a good look when a channel devoted to business and money helps spread a scam and drive up the price on some fake news.

It took CNBC a long time to admit the mistake and bring the Litecoin price crashing back to earth.

Full disclosure: FTVLive holds interest in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and Dogecoin.