peter - there was serious dollar volume here. presuming that there was a promotion and some sort of 504/506/RegA being done to fund the company, they almost had to have retail dollars.
they made a terrific strategic move to do the roundup play, because they automatically captured the interest of probably a couple hundred people right there.
the newsletter was junk. the best opportunity for some manipulative trading was early on, when they could do it (relatively) cheaply and take out a couple asks to create the charge and percentage movement they need to promote it on a wider scale.
after that, i just think it snowballed. probably better than they ever expected.
this will go down as one of the most egregious pump and dumps in the history of the pinks.