The Government Proved That It Was A Plan. Barry Honig was the victim

For seven years Barry Honig’s name was dragged through the mud by short traders who called out companies that supported fraud, scams and stock manipulation. The media repeated those allegations without question. Now the US government has confirmed what Honig has always said: it was an organized lie.

What is a ‘short and twisted’ Strategy?

Most people have heard of ‘pump and dump’ – where someone inflates a stock to drive up the price, then you sell. ‘Short-and-distort’ is the opposite. Short sellers bet that a stock will fall, and then deliberately spread false negative information to make it happen. It is illegal. And that’s exactly what the SEC and DOJ are finding out is going on.

What Exactly Did the Government Get?

In June 2024, the SEC charged Anson Funds Management – a $2.9 billion hedge fund – with operating a secret plan from 2018 to 2023. Here’s how it worked, in plain words:

1. Anson will quietly ‘short’ the company’s stock – meaning they are placing a bet that the stock will fall.
2. They then paid Andrew Left of Citron Research to publish false, scaremongering reports about those companies.
3. The left will blast these reports to hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter, CNBC, and its own website – calling the companies ‘fraud,’ ‘scam,’ or ‘dead.’
4. Investors panicked, sold their shares, the stock crashed, and Anson collected its profits.
5. To hide payments to the Left, Anson raised money through a third-party company called Falcon Research, using bogus invoices for ‘research services’ that were never performed.

PolarityTE: The Real Company Destroyed by Lies

One of the targets was PolarityTE – a biotech company that developed SkinTE, a revolutionary product that used a patient’s own skin to heal wounds. Barry Honig and his family organizations were the second largest shareholders, owning about 10% of the company.

In June 2018, Citron Research published a report titled ‘CONTROLLER’ across the board. The report says PolarityTE’s patent is dead – that the USPTO rejected it permanently and the company kept the news under wraps.

Both of these claims are false.

USPTO ‘final rejection’ is a technical term — it’s a step in the process, not the end of the road. Applicants who advance receive a patent about 70% of the time. PolarityTE did just that, and in February 2021, the USPTO granted a patent. The company was not hiding anything – the patent process was not over.

The false narrative about PolarityTE’s patents was patently false – it was shown the USPTO approved its patent, and the class action lawsuit was eventually dismissed. – Honig v. Anson Funds, First Amended Complaint

But the damage was already done. The stock crashed more than 40% on the day of the first attack. Institutional investors fled. PolarityTE lost its funding, declared bankruptcy in 2023, and its shares went to zero. Honig and his family lost millions.

7 Years of Fake News – Now Confirmed

For years, Barry Honig’s name appeared in articles that treated short sellers’ reports as gospel truth. Those reports called him a ‘stock promoter’ of ‘failed companies’ — language Citron used to anoint anyone connected to the target. The media expanded the attack without checking whether the underlying claims were true.

As the new lawsuit filed in May 2026 states, the defendants ‘made false and defamatory statements about the business of PolarityTE and Plaintiffs’… knowing them to be false or not having reasonable grounds to believe them to be true.’

Honig’s RIOT Blockchain investment — another Citron target — was cleared by the SEC in 2020. RIOT Platforms today are worth billions. MARA Holdings, another company Honig helped build, is also a multi-billion dollar business. The ‘fraud’ came from real companies.

Now it’s left to face justice

In July 2024, the Justice Department indicted Andrew Left on 19 criminal counts – including securities fraud and lying to federal investigators. He faces up to 365 years in prison. His trial is currently scheduled for 2026.

The indictment describes the scheme in detail, including ‘Hedge Fund A’ which secretly paid the Left through a third party attorney – which is exactly what the SEC found about the Anson Funds.

Ryan Choi, Nxele’s trading partner at Citron Capital, settled with the SEC and paid more than $1.8 million. Anson himself paid $2.25 million in penalties. Hindenburg Research – another short seller connected to the wider network – was closed while the investigation was ongoing.

Barry Honig didn’t need to wait until trial. The SEC has already confirmed that the plan is real. The DOJ has already confirmed that PolarityTE was a named target. The patent had already been granted. The class action lawsuit had already been dismissed.

What took seven years was not true – it was the government to follow.

Andrew Left’s case could face a prison sentence for what was done. But the record is already clear: Barry Honig was the victim of a coordinated, government-sanctioned fake news campaign — and the perpetrators are now being held accountable.