The SEC's Boston regional office has been probing Freedom for months, according to documents seen by CNBC and people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for Massachusetts is also making preliminary inquiries into Freedom, documents seen by CNBC show.
Nearly 115,000 Freedom shares changed hands in the first half hour of trading, 1.25 times the stock's 10-day average.
Turlov and Freedom are aware of the SEC probe, which has been going on for months, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.
An SEC spokesperson told CNBC that it doesn't comment on the existence or nonexistence of an investigation.
Persons:
that's, Timur Turlov, Turlov, Hindenburg, Citron
Organizations:
Nasdaq, Securities, Exchange, CNBC, Boston, Attorney's, Massachusetts, SEC, DOJ, Justice, Hindenburg, Citron Research, Las, Trump, Financial, Financial Industry, Authority, Freedom
Locations:
Almaty, Kazakhstan, Russian, U.S, Kazakh, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, New York, Las Vegas, New