ETrade Financial, the US electronic broker, was forced to buy shares in a San Francisco strip club operator which went bankrupt five years ago to protect its clients from internet hackers who illegally inflated the price in a so-called "pump-and-dump" scam.

Bloomberg reports that ETrade came to own one million shares in BoysToys.Com, a California-based adult website and strip club operator, after internet criminals from eastern Europe and Asia used stolen personal information to access its clients' accounts and used them to buy shares in the company to increase the price of the stock.