No sense in spending the money to buy a shell at the moment, even if it's a fully reporting shell they would still be required to file an audited set of financials to complete the reverse merger, then would be subject to the regular SEC reporting rules.
They can worry about that after they come up with some audited financials, but if they do that it should eliminate the need for a shell altogether. It would go a long way towards restoring the faith, and they could just change the name when they uplist to the OTC BB for the same effect in essence.