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Mantle Ridge’s nominations come as the activist investor said ongoing discussions with the company to “fully develop the combined value of its two primary segments” won’t finish up before the deadline for nominations to the board as outlined in the company’s bylaws.

Mantle Ridge nominated its own founder and CEO Paul Hilal, along with Susan Cameron, Frederick Crawford, John Flanigan, Cheryl Grisé, Steven Halverson, Daniel Heinrich, Edward Kelly III, Mary Laschinger, Dennis Reilley and Bertram Scott, according to the filing.

Mantle Ridge also said it has suggested to Dollar Tree of hiring Richard Dreiling, former chairman and chief executive of Dollar General Corp.
DG,
+0.03%,
to a “leadership role.”

In late November, Dollar Tree said it was raising its eponymous price point to $1.25 from $1 for good as part of its transformation plan.

She released an update on her 2021 giving on Wednesday, but didn’t reveal which groups received funding or how much money she had given out. Scott said she left “dollar signs” out of her update because she wanted media coverage to focus on the groups working on the causes she supports. She said she would let the groups that received her funding speak for themselves if they chose.

Scott also called for a broader definition of philanthropy — one that means more than just ultra-wealthy people doling out billions of dollars.

The lack of detail in Scott’s latest announcement provoked criticism from some philanthropy experts, who said that public scrutiny is one of the few checks against the power and influence of elite philanthropists. Others noted that charitable donations are typically tax-deductible, so all U.S. taxpayers have an interest in knowing where her money goes.

“She’s undermining norms of transparency and accountability for a good cause, but plenty of other donors would be interested in doing a similar amount of undermining those norms without her noble intent,” said Ben Soskis, a senior research associate at the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, after Scott declined to reveal details in her initial announcement.

Soskis, who studies the history of philanthropy, praised Scott’s subsequent update promising to share details.

“I hope this is an important moment in terms of establishing norms for the transparency commitments of living donors,” Soskis said on Twitter
TWTR,
-1.94%.
“We’re at a moment where they could go in several directions, including toward real opacity. I hope @mackenziescott will help move them in the other direction.”

“Make sure you move money out of your name and out of the banking institutions and be smart,” prosecutors say Aqueron told one client who had received notices that the IRS was seeking to recoup the fraudulently received refund.

In all, investigators say the ring filed claims for more than 200 people in 19 states, claiming over $40 million in bogus refunds.

Aqueron’s alleged co-conspirators, Iran Backstrom, also known as Shariyf Noble, of Milledgeville, Ga.; and Mehef Bey, of Charlotte, N.C., are due to begin trial in January, prosecutors said. Another alleged co-conspirator, Yomarie Febres, has also pleaded guilty, admitting to helping prepare many of the fraudulent tax returns.

Messages left with attorneys for Aqueron and Backstrom weren’t immediately returned. Lawyers for Bey and Febres declined to comment.

According to court documents, the group travelled the country to hold seminars instructing people who owned homes how they could recoup large tax refunds on their mortgage payments and other debts.

The group would allegedly offer to file the homeowners’ tax returns in exchange for fees of up to $15,000 — $2,500 up front and the rest due when a refund was issued, prosecutors say. 

But instead of filing a typical mortgage interest tax deduction, prosecutors say the group would file phony 1099 forms claiming the bank had paid the homeowner substantial income during the year and had withheld too much tax, meaning the homeowner was owed a hefty refund.

In many cases, the tax preparers would claim the homeowner was owed over $100,000 and, in at least one case, as much as $2.9 million.

In addition, prosecutors say the four evaded their own taxes, by instructing clients to make payments to accounts in other peoples’ names and by filing returns stating they had been filled out by the taxpayers themselves rather than by a preparer.

Prosecutors say Aqueron also attempted to hide money from the IRS, by transferring it into accounts in the name of his girlfriend and her minor child.

He faces up to eight years in prison and substantial fines when he is sentenced.

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AMC disclosed in an SEC filing Thursday afternoon that Aron and his CFO Sean Goodman recently sold 312,500 and 18,316 insider shares, respectively. All in, the two executives cashed out to the combined tune of just over $10 million.

This is Aron’s second major insider sale in as many months from which he looks to have pocketed more than $30 million. For his part, Goodman now holds zero active AMC shares.

For AMC “Apes” who have “HODLed” through the thick and thin of 2021, watching the senior executives get liquid from a stock they have rocket-fueled by more than 1,200% in 2021 prompted some soul searching on social media.

“Apes literally donating money to hedgies and shit C-suites,” posted one user on r/WallStreetBets.

“Dude is cashing out and leaving you guys the bag,” replied another.

Still, many others defended Aron’s share sales, reminding their fellow Apes that Aron told investors he would be selling shares for estate planning purposes during the company’s Nov 8 earnings call.

Not helping Aron’s case with the haters was his tweet from Thursday morning in which he attempted to quell a viral theory supported by financier Marc Cohodes that AMC should offer a tokenized NFT dividend that would keep short sellers from getting their hands on AMC shares.

“It is likely illegal, breaches our debt covenants and/or exposes AMC to huge litigation risk,” read part of Aron’s tweet. “We can’t do it.”

Aron’s cold shower was met with some frustration by many who had spent weeks backing the plan and caused some public Twitter drama between Cohodes and a Twitter influencer who had been working with him to publicize the plan.

It also caused AMC stock to fall by more than 10% at one point Friday and provided another glimpse in to the schism between Apes backing AMC and those loyal to the other Mother Meme stock.

“There is a huge difference between AMC and GME,” posted one user on r/WallStreetBets. “Only one of them had the potential for something amazing.”

And speaking of GameStop
GME,
+2.09%,
it also plummeted by as much as 4.3% on Friday, continuing its slide after the company’s quarterly earnings report on Wednesday revealed a 30% revenue boost but a dramatically widening loss-per-share, once again giving retail investors a financial Rorschach test to decide how painful the videogame retailer’s e-commerce transformation will be versus how much they “like the stock.”

Throughout 2021, GameStop stock has bounced from post-earning dips as retail investors piled in to buy shares at what they bragged online were a discount provided by Wall Street hedge funds, but going into the last hour of trading on Friday, the stock was down more than 10% for the week.

Overall, the mood around memes was rather dismal.

Enter Ryan Cohen.

“I’m cooler online than in real life,” the activist investor turned GameStop chairman/retail investor folk hero tweeted at 2:55pm EST.

From the moment that tweet went up, GameStop shares soared 6.3% to close up 2% on the day and cauterized the company’s losses at 4.2% for the week.

It also speaks to the power that Cohen has in the GameStop movement, a stark contrast to the suddenly damaged armor worn by Aron.

DOJ gives Reddit an early Christmas present with probe into short selling

Retail investors were also hyped by a report that the US Department of Justice is investigating some short sellers.

And while it does not appear that DoJ is looking specifically at meme stocks or the short seller funds that retail investors hate the most, the probe is reportedly focused on how shorts engage with researchers and publicize their findings to influence the movement of stocks they are betting against, which is also of interest to retail investors.

But there was more than enough smoke this week to show that meme stock investors need to start getting very cautious about what’s coming down the pike in 2022.

Friday’s new inflation data alone shows that the Federal Reserve will have to hike interest rates in 2022 and start putting an end to the opioid-level addiction to cheap money that has gripped US markets for more than a decade.

That era has also created the perfect incubation for meme stocks, fostering the growth of zero-commission trading apps, the dark pools that support them, and the algorithmic trading that has turned the outsider sentiment of individual day traders into huge market insurrections.

Once the Fed starts tapering, it will get harder and harder for Ryan Cohen’s tweets to salvage a trading day.

His remarks come as the U.S. registered the hottest U.S. consumer inflation reading in almost 40 years.

The cost of living climbed again in November and drove the rate of U.S. inflation to a nearly 40-year of 6.8%, putting more pressure on households as they confront rising prices of gas, food, cars, rent and so forth.

Kiyosaki’s comments also come as the Dow Jones Industrial Average
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+0.60%,
the S&P 500 index
SPX,
+0.95%
and the Nasdaq Composite Index
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+0.73%
were floating near all-time record closes.

To be sure, the author has been offering a gloomy assessment of financial markets for a while now and it has yet to come to pass. That said, there are a number of pundits and market observers who have been expressing concern about valuations and about the Federal Reserve against the backdrop of the COVID pandemic.

Kiyosaki’s prediction of an economic depression might be unlikely, but there is certainly more focus on the outlook for business as the economy emerges from a pandemic with the Federal Reserve tightening monetary policy and government stimulus spending winding down, leaving analysts to worry that valuations are richer than they should be.