The shares had an outstanding capital raising thingy going (don't know the terms)

Each individual share held the requirement to pay $2 at some later point.. So what he did was purchase a bunch of shares worth about -$1.99 for 1 cent each. It's on the market - so noone had to approve he could actually pay the later $2 installment.

He then managed to separate the value (voting rights) from the liability (oustanding $2/share) and profited from the value.