“Roaring Kitty” Sued Over Alleged GameStop “Manipulation”

(Bloomberg) — Popular stock market influencer Keith Gill, better known as “Roaring Kitty,” was sued for allegedly orchestrating a “pump and dump” scheme involving GameStop Corp. shares.

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Gill, who rose to fame promoting GameStop during the meme stock craze of 2021, reemerged in May and began posting about the gaming retailer again on X, the social media platform formerly known under the name Twitter.

In a proposed class action lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, GameStop shareholder Martin Radev claims Gill sought to manipulate the stock for his own benefit.

Gill did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The complaint alleges that Gill acquired 120,000 call options on GameStop before he began posting about the company in May. The stock, which was trading around $17 just before Gill started posting, rose to $48.75 on May 14.

On June 2, he disclosed that he owned 5 million shares of GameStop and 120,000 call options that were set to expire on June 21. As of June 13, Gill's holdings stood at over 9 million shares of GameStop with no outstanding call options.

Gill “quietly sold and/or exercised (i.e. gave up) his 120,000 GameStop call options for a large profit, apparently to increase his own stake in GameStop stock by more than 4 million shares ” Radev said in the lawsuit.

GameStop shares have since fallen, though they remain higher than before Gill's posts. They were trading around $23 as of early Monday afternoon.

Gill has become one of the public faces of the meme-stock frenzy, amassing more than a million followers on his YouTube channel “Roaring Kitty” and Reddit page “DeepF***ingValue.”

GameStop surged more than 1,700% in one stretch in January 2021, and the stock's stratospheric rise appeared to pit scrappy individual investors against sophisticated hedge funds that were heavily shorting the struggling mall retailer.

On Monday, shares of Chewy Inc. jumped as much as 10% after Gill disclosed a 6.6% passive stake in the online pet food and supply retailer.

The filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission came days after the investor posted a photo with a puppy without any comments about X. The post briefly propelled the pet food retailer to a one-year high on Thursday.

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The case is Radev v. Gill, 24-cv-04608, United States District Court, Eastern District of New York.

(Updated with complaint details.)

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