Players Network Inc. (fka PNTV)

[Toxic Avenger]

What Monk tried to do was convince everyone that all the O/S was controlled by "friendly hands" and that there was so much naked shorting going on that the friendly hands would force a short squeeze.
As with all these "naked short" scams though, it was all a lie and in addition to there being no squeeze, the companies had unsuccessful businesses, which led to complete collapses in the stock prices.

"Locking the float" was a misnomer based on the naked shorting myth. It was used (quite successfully) on several stocks, including PNTV. There were even some pictures of Monk and the PNTV principals dining and some claims that the PNTV leaders were endorsing Monk's investing classes. I believe PNTV even made a Monk promotional ad.

Float (meaning the shares that can be freely sold) just refers to the O/S that is not restricted. The actual float number is pretty meaningless. The key is the value of the O/S (market cap) - O/S times share price. As the number of shares increases, either the market cap rises or the price falls, or often both. This is why death spirals, convertible preferreds and free/discounted shares are so damaging. They massively increase both the O/S and the market cap, in the case of PNTV, without providing any justification, such as higher revenues or smaller losses. PNTV has 2 classes of preferred convertible equity AND significant convertible debt (death spirals).

You can see the massive dilution effect all these converts have on PNTV by looking at the O/S versus the "reserved shares", meaning waiting for a potential conversion.
"The Company amended its Articles of Incorporation on April 29, 2013 to increase the authorized shares of common stock from 150,000,000 shares to 600,000,000 shares, of which 103,103,275 shares were issued and outstanding and 283,121,434 shares were reserved as of September 30, 2013."