Check with your broker. They may "buy" the shares for the commission cost only.
You can deduct up to $3,000/year in net losses ($1,500 if married filing single) and carry over the balance to future years, with a net loss of $3k (or $1.5k) in every year.
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people"
H.L. Mencken