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***TLDR (don't blame you): TikTok's biggest influencer by follower count (160m), Khaby Lame likely pumped & dumped his own fans after making that suspicious deal I had talked about in my previous post. No media outlet has bothered to call it out.***
***This post gives the playbook to pull something like this off. Through utilizing a regulatory oversight within underwriting, a tinker of coordinated trading, and the influencer collab to bring in the liquidity... there's a whole new China Hustle that goes beyond the 2017 movie. If you're willing to take the risk to short it, there's decent money to be made timing it right.***
Hola fellow regards, hope February has treated all you beautiful souls well.
I'm writing this post as a well... more comprehensive follow up on [a post I did at the start of this month regarding the "deal" made that turned Khaby Lame, TikTok's biggest influencer, into a billionaire](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1qtig67/tiktoks_most_popular_influencer_sold_his_company/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) having more red flags than the former glorious motherland of the USSR.
If you don't have time to read over all my fucking yap (believe me, I hardly can too), I'll fill you in on a quick summary here.
* The acquirer/reverse takeover entity was Rich Sparkle Holdings, a Chinese financial statements printing company that [returned \~19x returns at their peak in 2025](https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/quote/ANPA/history/?period1=1738456733&period2=1767139200) that drove their market cap from $35m to $661m in mere months.
* This is in spite of the fact... it's a fucking financial statements **printing** company that only did $6m in revenue and had no material events or notoriety that would justify such a return.
* Their previous auditor, Wei Wei & Co resigned abruptly. They then chose to replace them with FundCertify CPA, an auditor with only [one publicly listed employee on their LinkedIn (poor guy)](https://www.linkedin.com/company/fundcertify-cpa/people/) and [a facebook account](https://www.facebook.com/people/FundCertify-CPA/61566746430615/) and [twitter account](https://x.com/chan1335289) with zero followers and generic stock photos.
* The underwriter for Sparkle's offering, Eddid Securities, was involved in the notorious IPO of fellow Hong Kong shitco $HKD, which saw its stock rise to nearly \~$400 billion at its peak... a case I firmly believe to have been self-underwritten to manipulate prices.
My take at the time was that this "acquisition" was likely an influencer-driven facade to pull a massive rugpull on fans of Lame and other retail investors; it was only a matter of time.
Lo and behold, if we take the price action that happened since
[DAMP EET](https://preview.redd.it/34n9oi7bhomg1.png?width=572&format=png&auto=webp&s=5fc7d9cbb10650af080a62b78fdbd12001869acd)
While I didn't end up taking a short position (borrow rates were too expensive for it to be feasible), a couple of you did, and updated me weeks after the first post about how much that rug was pulled.
For someone as big as Khaby Lame is on TikTok ([the guy literally has 160m followers on TikTok)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_accounts), I hadn't seen a single media article talking about the massive dump that came after the *acquisition,* despite the initial headlines of Khaby's $975m deal being on [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-27/tiktok-star-khaby-lame-signs-975-million-deal-to-monetize-global-fan-base) and [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/01/29/tiktok-influencer-khaby-lame-ai-avatar-deported-trump-creator-economy-975-million-deal/). The only thing up there is a [garbage GPT-generated Business Insider article](https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktoker-khaby-lame-975-million-deal-riding-on-falling-stock-2026-2) that doesn't fucking explain why this stock is plunging.
So fuck it, I will. There's a new type of China Hustle that's innovated far beyond what the 2017 movie proclaimed regarding these Chinese stocks. Let me run through that playbook, if you mind to indulge yourself in further yap.
# ACT I - The Public "Offering" And Pumping
It shouldn't surprise you that a financial statement printing company that [returned \~13x gains within a month of their IPO](https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/quote/ANPA/history/?period1=1752019200&period2=1756252800) is being price manipulated to a comical amount. But how? Equity markets *should* be built to halt any activity of this sort, and they usually do.
If you're trying to achieve this level of price coordination, you're going to need to control the distribution of who gets how much of those public shares (a.k.a mostly you and your compadres). Cornering the traded float allows massive illiquidity that could allow for price coordinating measures that could push up price to comical extent. If we get those shares underwritten to friendly parties within the offering process, we also aren't due to much of any lock-up restrictions and can dump as we feel.
The issue is, stock markets don't function like [crypto markets that let Hawk Tuah coin hit $480m in market cap before dumping.](https://blockworks.co/news/hawk-memecoin-launch-fail) American IPOs are done with underwriters under strict regulation to ensure that the book being built isn't going to people intending to manipulate the price. Even if we had... favorable underwriters, the book we built as we pleased would get flagged instantly by American authorities and SROs.
Keyword: American.
[Under Regulation S,](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/230.904) foreign underwriters are allowed to broker offerings without being SEC-registered, as long as they commit to not directly selling within the US. Offshore distribution means that whatever placements that are arranged aren't under the SEC jurisdiction to regulate, but whatever regulatory authority was local to where the deal took place. If we can do business in a place that has... lax oversight for book building, we get our book right.
I'm going to go back to $HKD's IPO in 2022 because a) I've already done more than enough work on it and b) it's probably the most fucking obvious example of my point (literally was bigger than [Goldman fucking Sachs at its peak](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-06/how-a-tiny-hong-kong-firm-grew-bigger-than-goldman-then-began-to-plunge))
[Pulled from $HKD's filed 424B4 filed July 16th, 2022](https://preview.redd.it/qq6icdtehomg1.png?width=809&format=png&auto=webp&s=e25240d7cfd79e105472e322f82cafd59efa1400)
If you couldn't already tell from the fact $HKD's parent company themselves underwrote their IPO ([ran by a CEO that allocated shares of offerings he did to his parent's firms, mind you](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-30/ex-ubs-banker-s-parents-bought-into-china-ipos-he-helped-arrange)), Hong Kong's SEC-equivalent in the SFC sucks ass at doing their job and can allow for shit like this to happen. As long as you're not fully allocating offshore, the SEC will look the other way.
[Disclosure statement within the 424B4](https://preview.redd.it/uu5qwglhhomg1.png?width=854&format=png&auto=webp&s=306d59fa7bc681254a0a65a9bb1673c4e8fb5f6d)
Now, is Rich Sparkle the same? You can look at the fact that, per [their prospectus](https://app.quotemedia.com/data/downloadFiling?webmasterId=90423&ref=319291838&type=PDF&symbol=ANPA&companyName=Rich+Sparkle+Holdings+Limited&formType=424B4&formDescription=Prospectus+%5BRule+424%28b%29%284%29%5D&dateFiled=2025-07-09), their offering was done entirely by Eddid Securities USA, who is SEC-registered.
To that, I call bullshit. If it's not already obvious from $HKD's IPO and their dual-use of both registered and non-registered broker entities within that scheme, I have little reason to believe that the printing company that delivered phone number returns in a month after IPO didn't employ self-allocation means to achieve such a return for a company that had no material events that would
So great, we've got our shitco running and pumping on the stock market. But we need our liquidity to sell into to fully gainsmaxx. Otherwise, what else are we doing it for?
# ACT II - Influencer Promotion & Dump (ft. Khaby)
The first thing I usually think of when I think of when I hear the the word *influencer* would be crypto scams. Perhaps that's the *Gen Z, terminally online* part of my brain thinking, but we're in an age where Jake Paul can net millions from crypto P&Ds and still headline boxing events with Anthony Joshua that further cripple his brain into another echelon of CTE.
These guys get reach, massive fucking reach, and when you're indulging into pump & dump scams, they'll get you that promotion you need. But there's a price to pay for it. While a lot of influencers have non-existent levels of shame, there's still a massive reputational hit that comes with, well *scamming your fans* ([r.i.p hawk tuah](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/haliey-welch-aka-hawk-tuah-tries-to-explain-herself))
Hence these types of scams are evolving, and what happened with Rich Sparkle and Khaby Lame is a prime example of this.
[Summary from Bloomberg Article, posted January 27th, 2026.](https://preview.redd.it/1lg3qrenhomg1.png?width=637&format=png&auto=webp&s=01edf30574eb5384692483a3b16b363c24f89599)
This doesn't appear to be a *Hawk Tuah Coin*, but an actual business opportunity.
Of course, the investor "pitch" is complete horseshit, talking about how the firm seeks to monetize Lame's *Face ID, Voice ID, and behavioral models for AI Digital Twin development* to somehow achieve more than $4 billion in annual sales (how exactly they are going to achieve that, isn't explained)
Lame, for his part, is certainly being paid on the side to promote people to go check out the stock and provide that liquidity needed for the stock to dump. A [Le Monde article ](https://archive.ph/LZBeC)written after the "acquisition" went through highlighted the fact the influencer was openly promoting the "opportunity" on his socials that reach hundreds of millions of people per day.
[excerpt from Le Monde article showing Lame's promotion of the stock](https://preview.redd.it/jey74l2qhomg1.png?width=522&format=png&auto=webp&s=4f619669b4e86c2d6e9c61836294af2d44cddac1)
That's not peanuts, and the amplification of this story hitting global headlines brings in retail investors that aren't adept enough to recognize this BS for what it is, being a lot more nuanced than (sorry Hailey Welch, but you deserve to be called out forever for this) *Hawk Tuah Coin.*
[February dump....](https://preview.redd.it/rb04hki2iomg1.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=ca7b9f5f430f8a79ada096a628dc329301598966)
In an almost-trademark move after the stock collapsed, Lame has deleted the links to Sparkle on his bio in both [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/khaby00/) and his [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@khaby.lame?lang=en) and hasn't commented about it publicly.
To the robot writing that Business Insider article... that's why this stock collapsed beyond "bad influencer deals"
# Epilogue - What's Next?
If you're wondering why I took the time to write all of this, it is because I believe that this deal isn't going to be a one-off, but the start of trend. The China Hustle gave investors the blueprints in terms of avoiding Chinese scams for years, but it's been nearly a decade since that movie came out, and these guys are a lot smarter than thinking paying Bubba Clinton for investor conferences to rinse retail out of their money. These types of schemes are WSBbait designed to rinse not educated enough to question it
If you want to take positions? Short these stocks at your own risk. Borrowing rates are pretty fucking nuts, and stocks like Regencell show the most regarded, manipulated stocks can somehow stay within a range over months before the inevitable dump. If you can ace the timing well, you're looking a nice fucking return.
Anyways, apologies for the Bible of a post this was. With how much finance slop there is online, I figure there needs to be some form of actually well-written finance pieces that can make you all wonder why this shit matters.
I'm out. Peace