A short-sell at­tack sends Ginkgo's share price spin­ning, un­der­scor­ing in­vestors' con­cerns over syn­bio field

Gink­go Bioworks, a syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy uni­corn that has cap­tured in­vestors’ imag­i­na­tions and trades un­der Genen­tech’s hal­lowed  old $DNA tick­er, took a big blow Wednes­day af­ter a short sell­er claimed the com­pa­ny rep­re­sents “a Franken­stein mash-up of the worst frauds of the last 20 years.”

Scor­pi­on Cap­i­tal, a hedge fund most re­cent­ly known for tor­pe­do­ing the stock of Berke­ley Lights $BLI, an­oth­er com­pa­ny dab­bling in syn­bio, re­leased a hefty in­ves­ti­ga­tion it says shows a pat­tern of fraud at Gink­go, in­clud­ing pos­ing re­lat­ed-par­ty en­ti­ties as cus­tomers and over­hyp­ing a plat­form with­out any mean­ing­ful IP and with a his­to­ry of fail­ure.

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