Andrew Left wants his fraud conviction tossed after witness gets caught up in insider trading probe

Andrew Left's lawyers asked the judge to toss his conviction on 13 counts of securities fraud.

Dania Maxwell/Bloomberg/Getty Images A witness who testified against Andrew Left has himself become involved in an insider trading probe.

Left's lawyers asked a judge to toss the jury verdict that found him guilty of securities fraud.

Prosecutors said they didn't learn about the investigation until after the trial was over.

A witness who testified against Andrew Left has himself become involved in an insider trading probe, bringing a new twist to the bombastic short-seller's fraud conviction.

Left's lawyers this month asked the judge who oversaw his trial to toss the jury's verdict convicting him of 13 counts of securities fraud.

The trial was irredeemably unfair, they said, because they never had the chance to ask the witness about the investigation and attack his credibility.

"A new trial would probably produce an acquittal," Left's lawyers wrote.

In June, a federal jury in Los Angeles found Left guilty of 13 counts of securities fraud.

Prosecutors said he deceived investors by using social media and research reports to set target prices for stocks — including Tesla, Nvidia, and Palantir — while quietly trading them at different prices with his own money.

The founder of Citron Research, Left is something of a short-seller celebrity.

He placed bets against GameStop at the same time it became a meme stock, which pitted him against some retail traders on social media.

For years, he was a fixture on CNBC and Bloomberg, where he shared his views on stock prices.

Left hasn't been sentenced.