I think that the CUSIP change did indeed alter thi

I think that the CUSIP change did indeed alter things for the shorts.

We saw the huge volume on the day of the conference call and the couple of days following -- 1.5 million shares, when we had seen days with trading volumes in the 100k's before that.

Then, we saw a day where clearly the stock was being walked down, on huge volume (well over 800k)

I interpret that as a bunch of shorts being covered, than, a day when re-shorting happened as they walked the price down (so that the first ones to short became instantly profitable.)

And we've seen days in the recent run-up that had good volume, probably some of those new shorts getting covered given that we saw all kinds of fake giant "asks" which disappeared when real buying came in. (That OTCmarkets.com "level 2" may not be as complete as we'd like but it is sometimes useful.)

Also remember one very important thing about the CUSIP change:
Some shorts covered and that created a TAXABLE EVENT for them. Given that estimated tax payments were due shortly thereafter, this removed some cash from their accounts. That's why I think we saw the 1.5 million shares traded right after the CUSIP change/name change announcement, but the big down day was "only" about 860k. Smaller short position (of the legal and naked ilk) after the CUSIP change/taxable event.

Of course this is speculation and could be wrong. We individuals don't get to see the order books, like the manipulators get to.