US accuses prominent short seller Andrew Left of fraud

The charges mark a major turn of fortune for the bombastic investor, who called his firm Citron Research because it analyzes the “lemons" of the stock market. He scored a major hit a decade ago with well-timed bets against onetime highflier Valeant Pharmaceuticals International but hadn’t matched that success more recently.

An indictment returned by a Los Angeles grand jury accused Left of essentially trading on his name and reputation, announcing his bets and naming price targets far from where a stock was trading. Left quickly closed his positions after his statements caused prices to move in the direction he wanted, the indictment says.

His appearances on cable news networks and statements on social media magnified the impact of his reports and caused others to follow his bets, according to prosecutors.

Left “used his platform as a securities commentator to manipulate the markets and enrich himself in the process," said Los Angeles U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, whose office brought the case.

Left, who operated out of Los Angeles for most of his career, faces criminal charges of securities fraud and lying to federal investigators. The indictment says he manipulated the prices of at least 15 stocks over a five-year period, earning illegal profits of $16 million. He sometimes suggested stock prices would fall by 50% or more but closed his positions after share prices had moved only a couple of percent, according to the indictment.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in 2015, Left said he tried to make Citron’s research more appealing than the typical Wall Street fare. “Sometimes you have a great story and the biggest challenge is, ‘How do I get people to read it?’ " Left said at the time. “Wall Street research is painfully boring. I enjoy being entertaining."

Many stocks that Left alleged to be powered by fraud later became targets of regulators. More than 50 companies covered by Citron Research were the subject of regulatory investigations, lawsuits or exchange delisting since 2001, his website says. He was sometimes right when he accused companies of questionable or fraudulent practices.

His work on drug giant Valeant, which questioned how it used a network of pharmacies it controlled, was largely on the mark. An executive at Valeant was later convicted of involvement in a kickback scheme that funneled business to the pharmacies.

Left’s indictment caps a three-year effort by the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney’s Office and fraud-section prosecutors in Washington, D.C., to examine the tactics short sellers use to instigate and then profit from a stock’s decline. Short sellers borrow shares from other investors and then sell them, in hopes that they can buy them back cheaper later and pocket the difference.

The Justice Department seized hardware, trading records and private communications as prosecutors looked for wide-ranging conspiracies and evidence of market manipulation, The Wall Street Journal reported two years ago.

Prosecutors also accused Left of hiding ties to hedge funds that got early notice of his research and, in some cases, passing off their trading ideas as his own. The hedge funds traded in advance of his reports becoming public and shared a portion of profits with him, the indictment says. When asked by federal investigators in January 2021 about one of those episodes, Left lied and said he “never, never, never" gave prior notice of a report to a hedge fund in exchange for compensation, according to the indictment.

Left also misled the market by disseminating reports that suggested he managed money for other investors, when he only invested his own funds, according to the indictment.

Short sellers have long served an important role in the markets. Betting stocks will fall in price can help investors hedge against risks, identify overpriced shares and even root out fraud. Shorts warned investors about the 2008 credit crisis and helped reveal scandals at Enron and Wirecard.

Short sellers say their research enjoys free-speech protections. But corporate executives often complain that they exaggerate a company’s problems or mislead by publishing more than they really know.

Left has long described himself as a publisher, and his website describes the limits of what he reveals. The site says “Citron Research will not report when a position is initiated or covered," the tactic that prosecutors now say was deceptive.

In one instance cited by prosecutors, Left shorted American Airlines stock in June 2020, a few months after the pandemic caused airline stocks to decline. In a message he wrote on Citron’s account on Twitter, now known as X, Left predicted that American would fall another 50% to $10.

But Left bought options that only required a small decline in price to pay off. Within 10 minutes of posting the tweet, Left closed out most of his bet on American shares. He dumped the rest within half an hour.

In some cases cited in the indictment, Left bet that stocks would rise, rather than fall, in price. But he didn’t hold the conviction for long. In 2018, Left wrote on Twitter that he was bullish on Tesla. Within one minute of writing that on Twitter, Left sold more than half his stake and pocketed $1 million, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors accused Left of manipulating the price of other stocks, including Facebook, now known as Meta, and Nvidia. He also “initiated a media campaign to discredit another activist short seller’s short report" on General Electric. In ridiculing Harry Markopolos’s report asserting that GE had aggressive accounting, Left published his own research indicating he owned the stock. In truth, the prosecutors wrote, he had already placed an order selling his GE shares when his report was published.

The case against Left says he knew that his recommendations would move stock prices, which “empowered him to manipulate the price of a targeted security."

If convicted, Left faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each of 17 securities-fraud counts, 25 years on a separate securities-fraud charge and five years for one count of lying to investigators.

Hong Kong regulators accused Left of misconduct in 2016 and banned him from the city’s securities market for five years. The city’s securities regulator alleged that Left misled investors when four years earlier he accused property developer China Evergrande Group of covering up its insolvency.

Left appealed the suspension and was later proven right, at least directionally, about Evergrande. The company collapsed earlier this year and Chinese regulators said its most important subsidiary had fraudulently boosted sales and profit.

But Left took a big loss when betting against GameStop three years ago. Some individual investors responded by sharing his personal information, hacking into his social-media accounts and texting Left and his two children with threatening, profane and personal language, the Journal reported in 2021.

Left mused on a video at the time: “When we started Citron, it was to be against the establishment. We’ve actually become the establishment."

Write to Dave Michaels at dave.michaels@wsj.com and Justin Baer at justin.baer@wsj.com