No one will ever know what happened with those shares but if the activity in June was shares converting for the 1.3bil in debt conversions and they got rid of it on Sept 28 then they made a mistake.

If by private you mean regular investors then I think that's what happened but we won't know for sure until we see the filings that cover that time period.

Some said it was a buyback but from what I remember there were over 500 transactions the day the 800mil traded. If it were going to be a buyback I would think it would be less than that.

Just guessing really.