could it also be a consortium of shorts? Perhaps a small group that owns that's say 2 million shares which they bought at lets say 31 cents per share. They can trade up to 2 million shares a day amongst themselves and never worry about being short to cover...they already own enough to do that. at 2 million shares, a swing of 20 cents equals 400 k profit every single time they manipulate this. The only way to burn them is to create demand for when they chose to sell low...vs them shaking out the weak ones