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New York (dpa) - The capricious prices in shares of the video game retailer Gamestop and other US companies lead to further legal conflicts.
With the Youtuber “Roaring Kitty”, a driving force in the investor community that drove Gamestop shares up has now been targeted in a potential class action lawsuit.
The Internet star is accused of violating securities laws and having made enormous losses to other investors.
The market turmoil will also be discussed on Thursday at a hearing in the US Congress.
Keith Gill, the man behind the YouTube profile, is a licensed finance professional who posed as an amateur to small investors in order to get them to buy overpriced stocks, according to the lawsuit filed in Massachusetts on Tuesday.
The plaintiff is a Washington State investor who speculated on options on Gamestop shares.
He is represented by the US law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, which specializes in mass litigation.
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Gill has so far not commented directly on the lawsuit, but has already defended himself in a prepared statement for a hearing in a US congressional committee, which is scheduled for Thursday on the recent market turmoil.
Gill assured him that he had not instigated anyone to trade in stocks in order to profit from them himself.
The idea that he used social media to advertise Gamestop shares to ignorant investors is "absurd".
At the hearing in the finance committee of the House of Representatives, Gill, the heads of the securities broker Robinhood and the online platform Reddit, Vlad Tenev and Steve Huffman, as well as managers of the hedge funds Citadel and Melvin Capital Management, are to testify.
In January, organized hobby speculators in shares of Gamestop and other companies such as the cinema chain AMC had a showdown in an online forum with some hedge funds, which bet on a fall in the share price and suffered heavy losses.
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The lawsuit against Gill is not the first litigation to emerge from the equity turmoil.
Above all, the fact that Robinhood and other brokers restricted trading in the hot stocks caused a lot of anger among investors and also led to class actions.
The suspicion of collusion between hedge funds and securities dealers is also preoccupying US judicial authorities.
The SEC and a working group from the Ministry of Finance are also investigating the processes surrounding the shares of Gamestop and Co.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210218-99-493057 / 2
Statement of Claim (via scripd.com)
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Link to the congressional hearing
Statement by Keith Gill aka "Roaring Kitty"