"I did not solicit anyone to buy or sell the stock for my own profit. The suit alleges that Gill did not disclose his financial background and tricked individual investors into buying GameStop at unreasonably high levels. In addition to posting on WallStreetBets under the name DeepF-Value, Gill publishes YouTube videos as Roaring Kitty.Ī proposed class-action lawsuit has been brought against Gill in federal court in Massachusetts. Gill sought to defend his actions regarding the heavily shorted stock, saying he had a genuine conviction that shares were undervalued by the market and felt confident enough to share his investment thesis. Keith Gill, a prominent member of the online community, took part in the congressional hearing Thursday focused on the events surrounding the GameStop short squeeze. Reddit's WallStreetBets forum was one place where retail traders flocked to post about GameStop. "People were very transparent about what they were doing and why they were doing it, which was fairly interesting." "As you look at the overall participation in this, it was fairly transparent what was going on here," he contended. After the stock price has been pumped up, a trader will dump the shares they own at the artificially high price.Ĭlayton said that from what he can tell, people who were trading GameStop shares were pretty clear about the motivation. According to Bloomberg, the SEC, in particular, is looking for pieces of misinformation that were designed to skew the market.Ī pump-and-dump scheme, according to the SEC, takes place when market participants push out "false or misleading information" with the goal of unleashing a buying frenzy. However, the stock has fallen sharply since, closing Thursday's session at $40.69 per share. I don't think so, based on what I've seen," said Clayton, who recently rejoined his old law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, after stepping down as the top securities regulator in the U.S.Įarlier this month, Bloomberg reported that the SEC is investigating social media posts to determine if fraud was a factor in the meteoric rise of GameStop shares, which went from trading below $20 in early January to an intraday high of $483 on Jan.