https://www.reddit.com/r/StockMarket/comments...m_cytodyn/

Naked shorts! The basic form of short selling is selling stock that you borrow from an owner and do not own yourself. In essence, you deliver borrowed shares. Another form is to sell stock that you do not own and are not borrowing from someone. Here you owe the shorted shares to the buyer but "fail to deliver." This form is called naked short selling.

Naked shorting is the illegal practice of short-selling shares that have not been affirmatively determined to exist. Ordinarily, traders must borrow a stock, or determine that it can be borrowed before they sell it short. Due to various loopholes in the rules, and discrepancies between paper and electronic trading systems, naked shorting continues to happen.

These short sales are almost always done only by options market makers because they allegedly need to do so in order to maintain liquidity in the options markets; however, these options market makers are often brokers or large hedge funds who abuse the options market maker exemption.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/...ed_shorts/