A Grassroots FOIA Campaign Swarms the SEC
FOIAengine: How Obscure MMTLP Became a Cause Célèbre
By John A. Jenkins, Law St. Media, Oct. 1, 2025
At the Securities and Exchange Commission, the inbox has been filling up with hundreds of near-identical Freedom of Information Act requests about a little-known company called Meta Materials, Inc., whose stock once traded under the ticker symbol MMTLP.
Most of those FOIA requests aren’t signed by big law firms or Wall Street players, but rather by aggrieved retail investors and citizen activists who buy into a conspiracy theory: that actions taken by the SEC and its self-regulatory arm, FINRA, in the interest of protecting investors actually constituted regulatory missteps that wiped out their investments.
There have been lawsuits, bankruptcies, death threats, and calls for Congress or the Trump Administration to take action. In one anonymous message to a market veteran reported by the Wall Street Journal, the sender alluded to mass shootings and vowed to come “piss on your casket.”
Big financial players – notably Citadel, and the online market maker Virtu – have been targeted and are fighting subpoenas. FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority that writes and enforces rules for registered brokers and broker-dealer firms in the U.S., also has been pulled into litigation. The hashtag #FinraFraud went viral.
Read more here.