So we've seen that shorts can legally disguise their short sales via synthetic long positions, and there is some evidence of that having occurred. (Because really, why are ~11,800,000 shares accounted for in open interest in the GME $0.50 1/22/22 put, alone? No one that has done a modicum of due diligence on GME would think that it'll be trading at $0.50 by next January--if for no other reason than the amount of cash they have on hand. Tons of absurdly high open interest can be found on every super low put going out to January of 2023. The only way I can make sense of that is that those stupidly cheap puts are being used to create synthetic longs. And that's just one of a ton of stupidly low puts with stupidly high open interest; ...imagine how large that short position actually is. But I digress; that's not the point of this post.)

Is there any hard evidence that shorts have only appeared to cover their position by creating synthetic longs?

In short, yes.

FINRA says 21.41 million shares were outstanding short sales on 1/29. Ortex pays a bunch of brokerages for information on how many shares that brokerage has loaned out, sums all of their data, and spits it out for us. Now, mind you, not all brokerages sell their data, and many hedge funds can get locates from other sources (e.g., other hedge funds) and thus short without borrowing from a typical brokerage that might sell their data. So Ortex's shares on loan data should be considered a conservative estimate of how many shares are really on loan--they simply don't have the data from every brokerage that is lending out shares.

The brokerages that Ortex pays for data collectively reported having 23.07 million shares short on loan on 1/29, roughly 1.66 million more shares than supposedly all outstanding shorts in FINRA's data. And, that doesn't even include the shares from brokerages that don't sell their data to Ortex, or shares sold short that weren't borrowed from a standard broker. So yes, there is conclusive evidence that at least some shorts have appeared to cover using synthetic long positions without actually covering.

Those synthetic longs stretch out until January of 2023, if the cheap puts are any indication. We may be in this for awhile. But I think the shorts are forgetting that unbiased investors are going to jump on GME like it's gold once Ryan Cohen and his crew unveil their new plan. Remember, Ryan's plan hasn't been officially announced yet--it's only been hinted at in his letter to the board before they gave him the reins--and most analysts aren't any better at reading than your average WSBer. With Ryan's plan, this company is going to be a technology giant, and shorts will eventually cover.

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TLDR: some shorts have definitely used synthetic longs to have appeared to cover their positions, as the incomplete number of shares shorted on loan compiled by Ortex is nearly 1.7 million higher than the official short report data. The real number is likely much higher, since Ortex can't get shares short on loan from every source.