Securities Regulator Penalizes Eight for Stock Price Manipulation

The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced civil penalties against eight individuals for manipulating the price and trading volume of warrant SIMAT-W3 issued by Simat Technology Public Company Limited and shares of Thai N.D.T. Public Company Limited (TNDT). The offenders have been ordered to pay combined civil penalties totaling 39,340,932.73 baht, with trading bans and prohibitions on serving as directors or executives at securities-issuing companies.

The SEC, acting on data from the Stock Exchange of Thailand, found that between May and August 2021, eight perpetrators with financial and personal connections engaged in coordinated price manipulation. The offenders were Kachaikit Ungram, Raphatphon Trongwongsa, Kraiwitthaya Tungsang, Variya Khemthongpradit, Thanapol Khemthongpradit, Sitthapavee Chavrangkul, Narutsorn Veechativattana, and Kannikan Jarukamphand.

They employed coordinated trading orders that supported and reinforced one another, causing abnormal price and volume movements that deceived retail investors into believing there was genuine demand for the securities. Their tactics included matched trades pushing prices higher, orders blocking other bids to force higher offers, order fragmentation into smaller lots to create false trading volume signals, similarly timed orders with comparable quantities and prices, and orders placed just before market close.

These actions constituted continuous coordinated price and volume manipulation, with four distinct incident periods identified: the first period covered May 31 to June 7, 2021, involving seven offenders; the second period from June 15 to June 28, 2021, involved all eight offenders; additional periods involved manipulation of TNDT shares beginning in early June 2021.