From December 2016 to October 2022, Kepler Capital Markets overstated its trade volume in approximately 377,000 instances, by approximately 2.1 billion shares. Penalty? Without admitting to the findings, a censure and $475k fine.

Kepler overstated its advertised trading volume:

Penalty?:

How could this have impacted GameStop?:

Inflated trading volumes can mislead the market as a whole about the liquidity and demand for a stock, potentially influencing trading decisions and stock prices unfairly.

My understanding is this creates a false impression of market activity, enabling short sellers to exploit perceived liquidity to potentially have executed large short positions without detection.

TLDRS:

• From December 2016 to October 2022, Kepler Capital Markets overstated its trade volume in approximately 377,000 instances, amounting to about 2.1 billion shares.
• Penalty? Without admitting to the findings, a censure and $475,000 fine.
• This false activity could have been exploited by short sellers to execute large short positions without detection.