The stock pumped with these ads are thinly-traded microcaps, often with minimal public financials available. The newspapers disclaim responsibility for the ads, with explanations like "It's not our job to vet the ads we receive," but I'm not buying it.

These newspapers have to have some sort of moral responsibility to their readers not to deliberately expose them to ads for bad investments or outright frauds. Are these publications so desperate for revenue that they have to tun to con-artists for advertisements?

Even when the ads are qualified with lines like "Special advertising section" at the top of the page, their very presence hurts the paper's credibility. What kind of respectable publication allows itself to be used as a shill for a stock promotion? By accepting money for running the ad, is The New York Times really any different than the promoter who collects a fee for orchestrating the campaign? These newspapers need to stop running these kind of ads immediately, before more of their loyal readers get hurt.