Yes. And Yes. And the two I am aware of personally, I burned both shorts personally and single handedly.
One went from $1 to $5 in a couple days, the other went from $0.03 to $0.40 in two days.
One was when I was a professional trader, and noted my retail order flow I was sending to a firm that we used often and was always low offer and I realized he was shorting against my orders. Finally, I sent order flow else where and forced him to cover and chase. BTW, he was at the time a friend of mine. It is called business.
The other was after I retired from trading. I was noticing a pattern on a stock with REGSHO FTDs, it was not a naked short, but a firm was shorting ahead of a delivery. There was about a two week window between the shorting and the delivery. After following the pattern long enough, and when the selling against the stock stopped after a couple of days, I jumped in. Having dealt with my clearing firm every day for years, I knew how they work and taught the B/D a lesson. The clearing firm most likely caught wind of what the B/D was doing and instructed them to stop. As In I caused a red flag in the back office.
During that process, they also had a very distinct trading pattern as well, I knew what they were doing. As a trader on the desk and knowing traders from firms all across the globe you get to know traders patterns and personalities. It sticks out.
But I will say, that was an era ago. LOL.