You appear to be mis-informed on this topic....
I will say, you do seem to know your accounting rules....
Market makers manipulate stock prices all the time...that's what they do..... it's not illegal.
Knight is one of the more prominent MM's in the industry and they have been in Torvec for quite some time now. They are pros and have substantial capital liquidity available to them which enables them to control pricing on chosen small caps in the market, such as Torvec, in a variety of ways.
In Torvec, I've noticed them holding blocks on both the bid and ask, tightly narrowing or widening the spread. They can go short and long simultaneously thereby limiting their outward risk on a stock. They can build an eventual long position by slamming the bid and stair stepping the ask to the downside. They can utilize this effort to accumulate at much larger levels than would be ordinarily feasible without ramping up the price.
Why do they do this....because they can. and they are good at it. My hunch is that at some point an event will occur on Torvec that will turn them in to buyers of TOVC, to take a long position or cover a short, or both.
Now naked shorting ....that's illegal and yet it still goes on. You and I have talked about this many times before right here on this forum. I'm not interested in re-doing those discussions.
Hope this was helpful...
Have a nice weekend everyone