2021 BRN Discussion, page-13713

Having worked in a bank previously, I can almost say for certain that the staff you spoke to do not believe that their broker has this ability because they are in the department that deals with retail investors like you and I. Those brokers also have departments dealing with institutional clients which do a lot more like mezzanine investing, structured deals, M&As, and of course shorting. These departments run independent of each other, and the retail guys probably have no idea what their colleagues in the instos do.

Also in addition to the shorters suppressing the prices, as is quite obvious from the "bad" videos and "press", that have suddenly increased in frequency and intensity, basically IMO this is shaking the tree as we have to remember that BRN was 3c just over a year ago, so the shorters are trying to scare off those mom and pop investors who have already gained 10+x on their investments, hoping that they would take profit and free up some liquidity. However as FF has pointed out, barely 1% of the entire share issue in circulation get traded every day, which puts with the likes of Google and Facebook, and not like the more volatile counters.