Yeah, GRVP was quite a story. But you should note that ONLY TDA clients made any money on it. Because ONLY TDA paid the dividend before it received funds from the company.
In a way, it's similar to what happened here, and perhaps a good omen for people who got the money. TDA let their clients keep their winnings; they must have eaten some fairly big losses. The other brokers never made the distribution, and the SEC suspended the stock three days later. It never traded again.
But there was one significant difference: GRVP really had gone to FINRA and had two dividends processed. The first was a gigantic reverse split--1:33,000, if memory serves--the second was to be a 33,000:1 forward split. The r/s was effected, leaving a new o/s of only 11 shares. The forward split was scheduled for a week later, but before that, an insider sold 400K shares, perhaps thinking the f/s had already become effective. (Or perhaps not; the SEC did later sue the company and its CEO.)
And so the stage was set for something that's never happened in Pennyland: a genuine MOASS. Until FINRA warned the brokers, and all but TDA declined to distribute the dividend.
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