Carson Block

Carson Block founded Muddy Waters Research in 2010 after living in China and learning about widespread accounting fraud among reverse-merger Chinese companies listed on North American exchanges. His initial report on Sino-Forest Corporation helped trigger a collapse in the company's stock and led to broader regulatory scrutiny. Muddy Waters has published numerous short reports exposing fraud and misrepresentation in Chinese companies and other global equities. Block's work led to increased SEC scrutiny of Chinese listings and changes in exchange listing standards. His success in documenting specific fraudulent accounting practices — rather than simply asserting that a company is overvalued — established Muddy Waters as a credible research operation whose reports carry sufficient evidentiary weight to attract regulatory investigations and institutional shareholder responses, raising the bar for activist short research quality globally.