(Bloomberg) — Popular stocks influencer Keith Gill, higher referred to as “Roaring Kitty,” was sued for allegedly orchestrating a “pump and dump” scheme involving GameStop Corp. shares.
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Gill, who rose to fame promoting GameStop throughout the 2021 meme-stock craze, reemerged in May and again began posting concerning the games retailer on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter.
In a proposed class motion filed Friday in Brooklyn, Recent York, federal court, GameStop shareholder Martin Radev claims Gill was in search of to govern the stock for his own gain.
Gill didn’t immediately reply to an email in search of comment.
The suit alleges that Gill acquired 120,000 call options in GameStop before he began posting concerning the company in May. The stock, which had been trading around $17 just before Gill began to post, soared to $48.75 on May 14.
On June 2, he revealed that he owned 5 million shares of GameStop and 120,000 call options that were set to run out on June 21. By June 13, Gill’s holdings had risen to greater than 9 million shares of GameStop with no outstanding call options.
Gill “quietly sold and/or exercised (i.e., dumped) all 120,000 of his GameStop call options for a big profit, seemingly to extend his own stake in GameStop stock by over 4 million shares,” Radev said within the suit.
GameStop shares have since fallen, though they’re still higher than they were before Gill’s posts. They were trading around $23 early Monday afternoon.
Gill became one in all the general public faces of the meme-stock frenzy, amassing greater than 1,000,000 followers across his “Roaring Kitty” YouTube channel and “DeepF***ingValue” Reddit page.
GameStop surged greater than 1,700% during one stretch in January 2021, and the stock’s stratospheric rise appeared to pit scrappy individual investors against sophisticated hedge funds that were heavily shorting the troubled mall retailer.
On Monday, Chewy Inc. shares spiked as much as 10% after Gill disclosed a 6.6% passive stake in the web pet food and product retailer.
The filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission got here days after the investor posted a photograph with a puppy with none comment on X. The post briefly sent the pet food retailer to a one-year high on Thursday.
The case is Radev v. Gill, 24-cv-04608, US District Court, Eastern District of Recent York.
(Updates with detail from the grievance.)
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