Carpe, that's the sweet thing about going to FINRA. If you will notice, in my original post, I mentioned rolling shorts.
Let's say you have brokers at Penson, WDCO, Alpine and ACAP that are working in concert to short against a stock. Broker at Penson initiates the short, time runs out and they ask buddy at WDCO to take their short position...he does....his time runs out, now it's ACAP's turn..etc.
FINRA comes in and does the Short Audit. Would you want to be ACAP....lol. ACAP is left holding the bag and left to cover...ha ha ha.
But yes, a rolling short is most certainly an example of how shorting can and is abused.
