Citron Research

And wouldn't you know it, it's not Keith Gill on the hook for this, but rather a short seller.

And not just any short seller, but Andrew Left of Citron Research, who you might know as a prominent investor who was actively speaking out against Keith Gill, releasing a number of tweets, showing up for interviews, and even at one point being brought on air to comment and watch the live stream of Roaring Kitty's return, with Andrew ultimately arguing that Keith Gill was misusing his influence to manipulate the stock price, and even going so far as to suggest that he had maybe been receiving payments or was otherwise backed by big money.

But in an ironic twist to the story, uh, Andrew himself has now been charged with both an SEC civil case as well as a criminal indictment where he faces up to 25 years in prison for market manipulation.

Well, the case is arguing that not only did Andrew Left make false statements to try and manipulate stock prices, but that he himself was being paid by hedge funds for some of his coverage, something that he actively tried to hide.

Very." Which, what the hell, man? So for today's video, I've read through both the SEC civil case and the indictments so that you don't have to, and I'll highlight the main points and what's being alleged here.

But before hopping into that, let's start with some context around who Andrew Left is.

Uh, if you haven't heard of him before, he's the main guy behind Citron Research and, by extension, Citron Capital, uh, with the former putting itself out there as an independent securities, uh, research publisher, meaning that they provide recommendations on publicly traded stocks, and the latter being essentially a hedge fund where money was actually being managed.

And through Citron Research-

Muddy Waters Research received it and published it on January thirty-first, calling the work credible.

Citron Research received the identical document and reached the opposite conclusion, publicly staying long on the stock, saying the findings didn't match what its own analyst had seen on a store visit in Shenzhen.

Two firms whose entire business model is finding exactly this kind of fraud looked at the same eighty-nine pages and split.

That is the first thing an ordinary investor almost never gets told about short seller reports.