The SEC would probably tell those shareholders to get together and hire an attorney, as happened with SPNG. If the attorney could come up with credible evidence suggesting that their holdings was greater than the o/s, then probably they'd do something about it. I think what they'd do would be to turn the matter over to FINRA.
In the case of EIGH (and probably CDIV as well), I imagine the SEC bluesheeted them. That means they can follow every trade easily. They can get NOBOs and OBOs at any time, and can also demand access to the TA logs.
So if they say there's no significant short interest, there isn't.
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