We already have a fallout in Archegos and Credit Suisse doing risky stuff (fraud TBD in court). With an exemption from the Fed on reserve levels over the last year, I'm betting those weren't isolated events and more banks have been very naughty.
Here's a documentary about naked short selling and failures to deliver if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpyhnmd-ZbU
Here's an economist, PhD and former DTC who authored "Naked, Short & Greedy" and has been trying to sound the alarm on naked shorts and phantom shares for decades: https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2020/03/how-phantom-shares-o...
From that article - "The world‘s biggest stock fraudster, Bernie Madoff, wrote from prison February 3, 2012, “It was perfectly proper to short [my clients’] securities or purchase those positions back from those clients or others with any profit or loss recorded on my books. … The point is that this was my practice prior to the time that I fell into my crime of staying Naked Short. The fact that the prosecutor and Trustee seemed clueless of this is why my frustration is so great.”
GameStop may have gone the way of Toys R Us and countless others.
The shares shorted don't align with what should have been available. You can tally up institutional ownership, make some guesses on retail and use the short numbers available from various sources. It doesn't add up. You can also look at SEC failures to deliver.
None of this sounds like an elaborate fantasy to me. The information is out there.
Now, will anything be fixed? Definitely not unless it's exposed. Kind of what this is all about.