If one suspects the market maker is trying to cause a feeling of fear by dumping shares from one account to another, can he not get busted? Would this mean he's vulnerable to law suits, or vulnerable to the SEC (given the new faces today)? Would an investigation be able to show if the accounts that conduct the transactions are his agents?
?...isn't that called an "aggressive short-sale disguised to look like a discretionary long-liquidation sale"?
It's something that specialists did in order to avoid the uptick-rule on short-sale initiation and to trigger sell-stops.