Boiler Room

A boiler room is an outbound call center that sells dubious investments by telephone, typically using unethical and deceptive sales tactics to promote penny stocks, private placements or outright stock fraud, often combining falsified or exaggerated claims with genuine, publicly released information about the company being promoted to make the pitch appear credible. The term carries strongly negative connotations, associated with high-pressure sales methods and, in some cases, substandard working conditions for the sellers themselves; a boiler room operation typically maintains an undisclosed financial connection to the companies whose stock it promotes, or otherwise conceals its own profit incentive for pushing a particular investment, rather than acting as a neutral broker.