Andrew Left, the outspoken short seller behind Citron Research, is headed to a criminal trial in Los Angeles on charges that he used social media to manipulate stock prices and pocket more than $16 million in illicit profits. Jury selection is set to begin May 11, 2026.

The charges and the alleged scheme

Federal prosecutors allege that Left ran a scheme from 2018 to 2023 in which he published misleading stock recommendations on social media, then traded against his own publicl