The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged broker-dealer TradeZero America Inc., and its co-founder, Daniel Pipitone, with falsely stating to the firm’s customers that they didn’t restrict the customers’ purchases of meme stocks when in fact they did.
In late January 2021, many brokers restricted investors’ ability to purchase a group of highly volatile stocks generally known as “meme stocks.” According to the SEC’s order, on January 28, 2021, TradeZero was instructed by its clearing broker not to allow its customers to purchase three meme stocks. TradeZero ultimately halted purchases for about 10 minutes. After the halt, TradeZero and Pipitone made misleading public statements via interviews, social media, and in a press release in an effort to distinguish their company from brokers that restricted trading during that period. For example, in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything,” Pipitone said, “That some trading firms are blocking these symbols is disgusting, unprecedented… Our clearing firm tried to make us block you and we refused.”
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