Groupon is sure making a lot of noise during its quiet period ahead of a hoped-for IPO.

Late Friday, a story leaked out touting that the daily deals company doubled its subscriber base. Reuters attributed the exclusive story to a “source familiar with the situation.”

It’s the type of headline that could raise the ire of the SEC, which is already scrutinizing Groupon for public pronouncements during its quiet period after it filed to go public in June, IPO and legal experts said.

Andrew Mason’s company has been accused of playing fast and loose with SEC protocols, said an IPO expert, who requested anonymity because he works closely with tech companies.

Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky was slapped for telling an interviewer his company would be “wildly profitable.”

The company had to amend its filing to account for that statement, and Groupon has amended its public paperwork eight times in all, which is an unusually high amount, another IPO expert said.

It would be difficult for the SEC to discover who was behind the public promotion of Groupon’s subscriber numbers and therefore hard to punish if it came from the company, the IPO experts said.

The Reuters report said that Groupon has more than 115 million subscribers, up from the 83 million it reported when it filed to go public.

The company will likely reflect those new numbers in yet another amended filing, which would limit the SEC’s ability to object to any leaking of that information, the IPO experts said.

“The leak is somewhat suspect, obviously,” said one of the sources. “But if it ends up that no one pinned down where it came from, and it ends up in the ninth amendment, that would take the sharp edges off the situation.”