The Department of Justice announced on Friday that prominent short seller and Wall Street commentator Andrew Left has been criminally charged with running a $16 million market manipulation scheme that included bets on stocks including Nvidia and Tesla.
Federal prosecutors have accused Left, 54, of Boca Raton, Florida, of using his position as an investment commentator for a major television network to make millions of dollars in illegal profits in an allegedly long-running fraud scheme.
The former Beverly Hills, California, resident was charged with one count of participating in a securities fraud scheme, 17 counts of securities fraud and one count of making false statements to federal investigators, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles announced.
Left is scheduled to be arraigned in the coming weeks.
The shocking announcement came after a federal grand jury indicted him on Thursday.
Prosecutors said Left “made comments about publicly traded companies, claiming that the market had misvalued the companies’ stock and that current stock prices were either too high or too low.”
“The editorials frequently contained sensationalized headlines and exaggerated language intended to maximize reaction from the stock market,” the Justice Department said.
“He established long or short positions in his trading account in the listed companies about which he made comments and promptly liquidated those positions after his comments were published, preparing to profit from any short-term price fluctuations caused by his comments,” the official added.
Left and his company, Citron Capital, were also charged separately in a civil fraud lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The separate lawsuit accuses the company of “operating a $20 million scheme over several years to defraud his followers by making false and misleading statements about his stock trading recommendations.”
“This fraudulent conduct misled investors and enabled Mr. Left to realize short-term profits by using Citron Research’s reports and tweets as a catalyst,” the SEC alleged in the complaint.
“Left directed transactions in furtherance of the scheme through his own personal accounts and through accounts in the name of Defendant Citron Capital.”
Citron Research, the market commentary website run by Left, boasts that it has “the best track record of identifying fraud and fringe business models of any published source.”
“The goal of this website has been, and will continue to be, to provide investors with truthful information in an enjoyable format,” the site claims.
The Post has reached out to Left for comment.
