It seems like the price of .000001 is too low to make any sense in an actual market situation. A possibility is that when people have shares in a stock whose value is less than the cost of a commission the broker takes them off their hands for essentially $0 and forgoes the commission. This is something I have done in the past. By assigning a non-zero value the trade then shows up in the 1099, helping people not to forget to take the tax loss.
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