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Right, purchase something like 200-300k worth of OTM options with low enough IV, tank the stock, cash out for 2-3mil. A 10x increase isn't all that crazy and and this trade is indistinguishable from someone that just likes to gamble on short-term options. Pay your taxes and brag to your friends about how you should start a hedge fund.

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Just doing that would be suspicious. Establishing a record of doing similar things for months to a year before the hack and THEN doing it, and continuing to do so for other stocks for a while after... well, then there'd be a LOT more plausible deniability.

r/wallstreetbets calls these (rather unfortunately) "fd" options.

Basically you can use not that much money to buy unlikely to be profitable options and make an actual crapload of money - and it would look identical to just being lucky.

The thing is 90% of people don't trade options themselves, and 99% of people don't do random fd plays. If you tipped off someone from WSB then they'd likely get away with it - that's what they do. Tip off a family member who has never traded options before, well....

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