I agree with the sense of what you are saying, but I don't think it is fair to say that management had "zero IT" experience. Overland Storage (formerly Overland Data) was manufacturing tape drive controllers in the late '70s (or at least by 1980, by my personal experience), and went on to buy a tape drive manufacturer and build and sell robotic tape libraries.
Prior to his involvement at Overland, EK had brought/sold his Snap Server product to Adaptec, and then bought it back for pennies on the dollar when they were unable to make a commercial success of it. (I believe that there may even have been some remnants of my code, improperly obtained, in early versions of that product). If he is successful in buying back the Overland/Tandberg line from Sphere 3D, this will be his third (or possibly fourth) time around. For what it's worth, EK might be one of the biggest losers in Overland stock value in the Sphere 3D era. The experience is there, it's just not one of commercial success. EK is much better at promoting than he is at delivering products that succeed in the marketplace.
I also believe that Glassware was legitimate before SI and PT got a hold of it. It is likely a product that could have had a place as an embedded component of other software developer's systems, particularly in applications where the scope was limited and security was bounded elsewhere. It definitely wasn't all things to all people. Any belief that it could be expanded to be a significant player in the virtualization marketplace given the development resources available was simply moonbeams. These developments have to be capitalized with $bbn, not $mm, and even with $bbn they are high risk and have to hit a very narrow window of opportunity.
SI and PT had experience at exploiting financially vulnerable companies. They needed an appearance of legitimacy, which Overland/Tandberg provided. They also needed a technology that wasn't well understood by the common investor that appeared to have a lot of sex appeal (enter Glassware). The resulting combination was fresh meat for their pump-and-dump.
They used an acquisition strategy to misrepresent the declining revenue of the combined entities as if there was growth. They also used some "gerrymandering" to conceal the lack of revenue from the Glassware product. Their auditor comprehensively (and perhaps actionably) failed to properly represent and adequately disclose and emphasize the actual trajectory of the business.
As far as Opus Bank, they don't have an excuse. If there is any Darwinian karma involved, they need to eat a big loss. They supposedly have pros there who should be able to sniff out anything this obvious. They hold all of the cards right now, somewhere between ironic and idiotic.
CCP will also likely get what they deserve.
As far as the "retail investors", from what I understand, many of them followed a (another?) flim-flam man who ran a "HTBHS" newsletter. It was an expensive lesson. If you're in that boat, you have my sympathy.
