what is a boiler room 
a boiler room is a place or operation usually a call center where high pressure salespeople call lists of potential investors sucker lists to peddle speculative sometimes fraudulent securities sucker lists identify victims of previous scams understanding boiler roomthe term boiler room refers to an early practice of running such operations in the basement or boiler room of a building and is so called due to high pressure selling a broker using boiler room tactics gives customers only positive information about the stock and discourages them from doing any outside research boiler room salespeople typically use catchphrases like it s a sure thing or opportunities like this happen once in a lifetime boiler room methods if not illegal clearly violate the rules of fair practice set forth by the national association of securities dealers nasd the north american securities administrators association nasaa estimates that investors collectively lose billions of dollars a year to investment fraud 1