"...our distressed desk would essentially short the common and buy senior bonds and the way they made $$$ was forcing the company into bankruptcy and continuously shorting the stock." Sure they did.
1) You cannot force a company into bankruptcy by shorting its stock. The value of a company's stock has nothing to do with its ability to pay its debts (solvency) or its net worth (if deficient, a bankrupt condition), the two considerations that can force a company into declared bankruptcy. The only company hurt by a low share price is one that is already in so much trouble--for reasons far removed from shorting its stock--that it must issue stock for cash and cannot borrow as an alternative.
2) Senior paper doesn't get more valuable in a bankruptcy. It's usually converted into junior paper or stock, unless the bankruptcy is a Chapter 7 liquidation, in which case the senior paper is really going to take a hit. Buying senior bonds and shorting the stock, as a money making proposition, is a fantasy.
Your discussion of PIPEs, like discussions of death spiral financing, is unrelated to normal short selling of a stock and, in fact, can't even be entertained without the complicity of a corrupt or stupid management. I don't know where you got your theories about making money by bankrupting companies, but it sure wasn't from practical experience, regardless of where you worked or what you believe you observed.
