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\t The short seller, behind a market rout of over $100 billion in India's Adani Group, said in its report that former Block employees estimated that 40% to 75% of accounts they reviewed were fake, involved in fraud, or were additional accounts tied to a single individual. Block shares fell as much as 22% before paring losses and were last down 14% at $62.61 in afternoon trading. The company said the short seller's report on its Cash App business was "factually inaccurate and misleading report" and it intended to work with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to explore legal action. After reviewing the full report, Block said it was "designed to deceive and confuse investors". The move is seen as a challenge to Dorsey, who co-founded Block in 2009 in his San Francisco apartment with the goal to shake up the credit card industry, and is the company's largest shareholder with a stake of around 8%. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain | Cyber-safety | Fintech | E-comm | ML | Edtech | The NYU dropout was just until two years ago splitting his time between the payments firm and Twitter, his other venture that went private in 2022 in a $44 billion buyout by Elon Musk that Dorsey supported. "Our 2-year investigation has concluded that Block has systematically taken advantage of the demographics it claims to be helping," Hindenburg said in a note published on its website. The report comes at a time when the outlook for the payments industry has been clouded by worries over the strength of consumer spending in the stubbornly high inflation and expectations of an economic downturn. Those concerns triggered a more than 60% slump