Prominent short seller and Wall Street commentator Andrew Left was hit with criminal charges for running a $16 million market manipulation scheme involving bets on stocks including Nvidia and Tesla, the Justice Department said Friday.
Federal prosecutors accused Left, 54, of Boca Raton, Fla., of using and abusing his position as a investing pundit on major TV networks to rake in millions in ill-gotten gains during the allegedly long-running swindle.
The former resident of Beverley Hills, Calif., was charged with one count of engaging in a securities fraud scheme, 17 counts of securities fraud, and one count of making false statements to federal investigators. the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said.
Left is expected to be arraigned in the coming weeks.
The stunning announcement was made following his indictment by a federal grand jury on Thursday.
Prosecutors said Left “commented on publicly traded companies, asserting that the market incorrectly valued a company’s stock and advocating that the current price was too high or too low.
“The commentary routinely included sensationalized headlines and exaggerated language to maximize the reaction it would get from the stock market,” the DOJ said.
He allegedly “established long or short positions in the public company on which he was commenting in his trading accounts and prepared to quickly close those positions post-publication and take profits on the short-term price movement caused by his commentary,” the officials added.
Left and his firm Citron Capital also were separately charged in a civil fraud action by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
That separate case accused the company of “engaging in a $20 million multi-year scheme to defraud followers by “publishing false and misleading statements regarding his supposed stock trading recommendations.”
“This fraudulent practice deceived investors and allowed Left to use his Citron Research reports and tweets as catalysts from which he could derive short-term profits,” the SEC alleged in the complaint.
“Left directed this trading in furtherance of the scheme through his personal accounts and accounts in the name of his entity, defendant Citron Capital.”
Citron Research, a market commentary website run by Left, boasts that it has “amassed a track record identifying fraud and terminal business models second to none among any published source.”
It claims: “The goal of this website is and has always been to provide truthful information in an entertaining format to the investing public.”
The Post has reached out to Left for comment.
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