Government agencies probe GameStop pump over potential illegal manipulation
DUNCAN RILEY, 11 February 2021
U.S. government agencies have launched federal investigations into whether the social-media-driven activity around GameStop Corp.’s share price rise in January constituted illegal market manipulation.
According to a report today in The Wall Street Journal, both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are formally investigating the pump of GME stock, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is also reviewing the matter.
The investigation by the justice department is being led by the department’s fraud section and the San Francisco U.S. attorney’s office who have sought information about the security activity from brokers and social media companies that were at the center of the trading frenzy. Subpoenas are said to have been issued for information to brokers including Robinhood Markets Inc. that was widely used by those buying up GameStop and other shares such as AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. Continue reading “Article: Government agencies probe GameStop pump over potential illegal manipulation”
The Reddit/GameStop aftermath continues. Now, it’s been reported, investigators at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are allegedly scouring posts on social media and online message boards for evidence of fraud and coordinated stock-price manipulation in the hype that led to recent unlikely surges in the stock prices of GameStop, AMC Entertainment Holdings, and a few other companies.
LaSalle Vaughn is the 
Kevin Wyatt is an Insurance & Business Risk Head at Robinhood based in Menlo Park, California.
Heather Breslow is the Head of Research at Robinhood. As the Head of Research, Heather is responsible for building research as a strategic capability of Robinhood. Before joining Robinhood in 2017, Heather was a Senior User Experience Researcher at YouTube.
Baiju Bhatt is the co-founder of Robinhood, the fastest-growing brokerage in the world. In 2013, Bhatt co-founded Robinhood with Vlad Tenev, aiming to democratize the financial system. The company has millions of users across the country and is currently valued at $8.6 billion. Bhatt earned his B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics at Stanford University.
Vlad Tenev is the co-founder and CEO of Robinhood. A first-generation immigrant from Bulgaria, Tenev earned his B.S. in Mathematics at Stanford University before starting two finance companies in New York City, selling trading software to hedge funds. In 2013, Tenev and longtime friend Baiju Bhatt co-founded Robinhood, a zero-commission brokerage dedicated to democratizing the finance system. The company has millions of users across the country and is currently valued at $8.6 billion.
In a matter of days, GameStop has gone from being a dying retail chain to the latest obsession of media and markets. Along the way, the GameStop saga has morphed into a lesson in American populism, an allegory of Main Street taking a pound of flesh from Wall Street.