Gill was a clean cut Registered Rep at MassMutual by day and a long-haired, head-banded, fast-talking stock promoter on social media by night, sending out video promotions for GameStop that were filmed at a trading desk he had set up in his basement. (See this YouTube video by Gill. It has a caption suggesting GameStop could go from $5 to $50.)
This is highly likely to be a serious problem for both Gill and MassMutual. A genuine amateur trader could plead ignorance of industry rules about hyping stocks to the public. A heavily licensed industry professional cannot. The fact that Gill passed all those exams means that he knows what the rules are. In addition, the broker-dealer unit of MassMutual, MML Investor Services LLC, that employed Gill as a Registered Rep, could potentially face charges of failure to supervise.
Wall Street’s self-regulator, FINRA, shows on its publicly available BrokerCheck, that Keith Patrick Gill holds the following licenses: a Series 7 that allows him to trade stocks and corporate bonds for clients; a Series 3 which allows him to trade commodities for clients; and a Series 24 which allows him to function as a branch manager of a brokerage firm and supervise other licensed traders. Gill passed his exam for the commodities license eight years ago. He obtained the Series 7 and Series 24 licenses more than four years ago.