Bed Bath & Beyond’s CFO Gustavo Arnal died shortly after facing lawsuit claims of insider trading with GameStop’s Ryan Cohen.
His death occurred days after the company had announced it would be closing 150 stores and cutting 20% of its corporate staff.
The incident occurred less than two weeks after the executive, 52, was named in a federal class-action lawsuit on allegations of federal securities fraud, insider trading, and breach of fiduciary duty, according to court documents, per Business Insider.
The Chief Financial Officer was found dead on Friday after falling from the 18th floor of a New York City apartment building.
Arnal was cited in the suit along with activist investor and GameStop chairman Ryan Cohen, who the lawsuit claims collaborated with the CFO in a “fraudulent scheme to artificially inflate the price of Bed Bath & Beyond’s publicly traded stock.”
On August 18, both Arnal and Ryan Cohen sold shares of the company, with Arnal selling more than 42,000 shares for an estimated $1 million, and Cohen selling the entirety of his 9.8% stake through his firm, RC Ventures, causing share prices to plunge.
The lawsuit claims Cohen — who is also the co-founder of Chewy and chairman of GameStop — approached the CFO about his “pump and dump” scheme in March 2022, and “convinced Gustavo that their plan would be a mutually beneficial one.”
BBBY CFO & GameStop Chairman allegedly collude in pump and dump scheme
“Under this arrangement, defendants would profit handsomely from the rise in price and could coordinate their selling of shares to optimize their returns,” the lawsuit states.
Arnal allegedly worked with JPMorgan, which is listed as a defendant in the suit on claims the bank “aided and abetted” the plan by “enabling Cohen to use JPM’s accounts to effectuate such transactions and otherwise launder the proceeds of their criminal conduct.”
Ryan Cohen made a profit of $68.1 million from his stake in Bed Bath & Beyond.
Bed Bath & Beyond was one of the so called ‘meme stocks’ that was halted last year alongside AMC Entertainment stock and GameStop after retail investors had aimed to squeeze short sellers from their positions.
Investors and shareholders are still figuring out how to process this tragic death.
Leave your thoughts down below.
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Im buying and holding AMC and keeping my shares of APE while buying more of them. Just another day. Let the cheaters be discovered. Im honest in my buying. Using my hard earned cash only.
Back a few weeks ago rumours had it that Ryan was selling BBBY and then the truth comes out. This is pretty bad because Ryan is also on the board of GameStop. Is he going to try to bankrupt the company too he’s not to be trusted anymore. He is also on Chewy. When Ryan does something stupid like this to make himself rich he doesn’t think of other shareholders from these other companies well if I was them I would get out like I did with GameStop
I think we have been screwed by RC and NOT IN A LIFETIME HF ARE GOING TO COVER ANYTHING…!!!
RIP BBBY CFO & BAG HOLDERS & Co
The Stock market is a massive fraud. The sooner the SEC is investigated the better.
Hmm…sounds like others like Ken griffin need to take a leap(involuntary suicide) themselves
It does make a person wonder how much of the stock market is just a massive fraud? The “coordinated crime” trade per article, and the players involved does bring into question a lot of what has been going on past few years. Is manipulation and selling unowned/fake shares (shorting, naked shorting) the only way banks/hedge funds can make a profit? Faber (CNBC) mentioned a while back the banks/hedge funds weren’t doing very well with their public investments, but made a lot of money in private trades (dark pool trades, shorting/ naked shorting, stock/option manipulation….).
I agree the whole market has turned into a scam for the rich. Its manipulated be the government way to easily and they are all in it as well. This shit needs to stop. They dont want the memes to ride it up but it is totally fine for them to crash it whenever they want and make millions totally frustrated and totally pissed off the small people always take it on the chin and the rich laugh and get richer.
CNBC helped promote many a money losing IPO and SPAC ….. they are part of the problem. Better off watching Bloomberg they focus on macroeconomics, not hyping bs stocks.
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