If someone wanted to short this stock they would need to put up $2.50 per share in margin to do so.
So for example, if someone shorted 100,000 shares at $0.09, the MOST they could make is $9000. Not a penny more. In order to do that they would have to put up $250,000 in margin to do so.
That makes it incredibly risky...not to mention the fees and interest needed to maintain the position.
So no....it wasn’t “shorting”.