My earlier post#18880 should help to answer that.most of the time in pennies at least it's not a case of either/or but a combination of both, this helps muddy the waters & shift the blame entirely on to the Co. at this moment in time it's virtually impossible to find out how many counterfeit shares there are. most transactions are done on the Internet & certificates are no longer held physically by the shareholder.the brokers & the DTCC are SRO's so the system is open to wholesale abuse(no paper trail, no oversight). most counterfiet shares though are done now outside the system via a long daisy chain, which makes it very diffucult to track the source. Broker/dealers operate on a system of IOU's outside the system which is why the declared short interest is meaningless. however if the SEC actually did the job they were mandated to do & enforce the 1934 Securities & Exchange Act their would be no FTD's in the system. their total lack of enforcement just encourages the counterfieters to keep on keeping on. until a special prosecutor is appointed or the SEC is either scrapped & replaced or forced by congress to do its job the status quo will remain. Currently there are a number of trials due to ahead(with discovery)that will bring this problem out into the open. additionally if the federals continue to do nothing the "states" will be jumping in, much like what happened with the S & L scandal, but this is a whole lot bigger. tlo.
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