It's not Broker manipulation. It is the system. They (the MM's, not Brokers, unless your broker company is also an MM - Most are) are not "manipulating" they are trading.
Rhetorical question: Do you think you are buying and selling shares of penny stocks from each other?
You are not, you are trading with the MM. The prices you see on the level II's may or may not reflect the prices of other shareholders (usually they do). But it is the MM's bid/ask price you see and they maintain their own spreads depending upon their own inventories and their retail bid/asks coming in.
If an MM has a buy offer listed at .0001 we see it as a bid of .0001. If you hit that bid with a sell of .0001, he will purchase your shares and hopefully very soon sell to the first person (or another MM) hitting his sell price with a buy.
This is a simplistic example for illustration. The MM's have computer programs that handle most of this these days. They usually don't have someone "sitting at a desk" trying to screw people. I said USUALLY. This also explains why it is so hard to get shares at .0001. As the price can't go lower, you are in direct competition with the MM who is calling the shots. Usually when you get in, it is because an MM is balancing his position as in reducing "inventory".
Everybody who hates the mm's and their "short positions" shows their ignorance. Without such positions, the very liquidity they provide would dry up. Such positions are a necessary part of the system. In strict theory, every stock purchase results in a short sale by the MM that needs to be covered, either by his own inventory or by getting shares somewhere else.
.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
