Worse than churning
From what has been shown so far, I think this is worse than churning.
Churning is where a broker makes excessive trades with no real purpose except for the broker to collect the commission on the trades.
While part of what was going on, given the court filing, may be part of that, it is possible that the money and account that Laken had control over was being used to manipulate the price of the stock, or even worse, Lakken, people associated with Laken and/or insiders could have been selling their shares, unloading shares, and having the account that Lakken had control over to purchase the shares and sticking another person with the losses.
There would also be problems with the fraud and concealment of using another persons account to prop up a stock without their knowledge.
Louis J. Desy Jr.