By Michelle Price

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – A year ago Keith Gill was a worker at an office. His “Roaring Kitty”, YouTube personality, sparked a global trading frenzy that saw bullish bets fuelled by Keith Gill’s Youtube persona. This propelled GameStop shares to record highs and left hedge funds with millions of dollars of losses.

Gill is back inobscurity, but he’s much more wealthy thanks to the GameStop positions that once amounted to $48 million. MassMutual has fired Gill from his position as marketing manager.

A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Securities regulator said that they are still investigating Gill’s actions around Reddit. But in April, a court dismissed a lawsuit alleging Gill violated securities laws by inciting the rally in GameStop and causing “huge losses” for investors.

Known as “Roaring Kitty” on YouTube and “DeepF***ingValue” on Reddit’s popular WallStreetBets forum, Gill was a key figure in the so-called “Reddit rally” which saw shares of GameStop surge 1600% at one point in Jan. 2021.

Stock peaked at $482.95 when hedge funds shorting GameStop had to purchase at any price. It is now back down to earth. However, it’s still hovering around $112 per share compared with less than $20 Jan. 1, 2021.

Gill introduced GameStop with colorful Reddit streams and Reddit posts praising his GameStop positions. This helped to draw a lot of retail cash into the struggling brick-and-mortar store.

GameStop, along with other “memestocks,” a furious rally that swept the hedge fund sector rocked Wall Street. Federal regulators were also on hand to examine it. Gill was questioned by Congress along with several other traders, financial executives.

Gill passed away nearly as soon as he became famous. His last posts on WallStreetBets via his ‘DeepF**ingValue’ handle and his Roaring Kitty YouTube stream were on April 16, 2021. The kitten video, his last tweet via @TheRoaringKitty was posted on June 18, 2021.

Public records searches show that Gill is not involved in any new business ventures. Gill didn’t respond to our requests for comment.

He testified to Congress last fall, however, that he did not use social media for profit to promote GameStop and unwitting investors.

He stated that he was clear about the channel’s educational purpose and his aggressive investment style was not suitable for all people.

“We’ve learned just what someone like that can do to the market and to investors,” said Joshua Mitts, an associate professor at Columbia Law School who has researched the use of social media to influence stocks.

Mitts stated that the rally in meme stocks was caused by an uncommon combination of factors, including an army of retail traders, low interest rates and easy money due to pandemic stimulation, as well as Gill’s alleged large and steady profits.

But, he added, it may happen again.

“What I expect to see going forward is social media personalities making money by driving prices in one direction or another — not necessarily in the magnitude that we had.”

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did not comment on Gill’s actions.

Howard Fischer, a partner at law firm Moses & Singer, said it remained unclear whether Gill broke any laws. He said that Gill’s fanatical following of retail traders was based more on tribal identity than economics. This is troubling.

It is possible that it was merely a passing fad or a major change in market practice.

Gill started sharing WallStreetBets positions in September 2019 and posted a screenshot showing that he had $53,000 invested in GameStop. Gill posted a screenshot showing that his GameStop stock position and cash value was nearly $48,000,000 by late January 2021.

Gill published screen shots that showed that he used GameStop call options to buy 50,000 additional shares. The post was shared on WallStretBets’ April 16th posting. It sparked thousands upon comments applauding this punchy move.

Reddit user zammai wrote, “He made history books.” You can simply retire a legend to go off the grid.