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Call him Icahn the python.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn and his fellow Herbalife bulls have slowly and steadily squeezed the profit out of Bill Ackman’s $1 billion short bet.
Ackman, who once had a paper profit of $480 million, is now down $10 million, according to calculations by The Post.
Icahn, on the other hand, is up $228 million, calculations show.
Ackman, 47, yesterday slipped into the red for the first time since he launched his Herbalife short — shorting more than 20 million shares at roughly $50 a share.
The $228 million gain for Icahn, 77, is based on the 16.9 million shares of Herbalife regulatory filings show he owns.
Herbalife has slowly crept up more than $15 a share since its auditor KPMG resigned in mid-April after it revealed that a partner leaked client info to a third party.
The company said yesterday it hired PricewaterhouseCoopers to replace KPMG.
Herbalife closed yesterday up 2.7 percent, to $50.54, and is up 53 percent this year.
The stock’s rise has forced other short sellers to cover, leaving just Ackman and Icahn to battle over the distributor of diet and nutritional supplements.
Ackman famously called Herbalife a pyramid scheme on Dec. 20, saying that regulators would shut it down.
Herbalife has denied Ackman’s charge. It said last month it was forced to shelve a stock buyback program after KPMG quit. A new accountant should eventually solve that problem, giving an additional boost to the stock.