I heard the same as you back about 5 - 7 years ago. I don't recall the stock symbol now (tired brain), but it was a pennystock competeting (yeah; RIGHT!) with Netflix. The stock had a lot of interested folks, and it had a monstorous run, if one was patient. Then it got up close to $.10 a share (the run started around a $.01 if I recall correctly). I had made big money on the run-up, then transfered funds I shouldn't have into the stock and bought shares around $.09 on my last buy.
The stock dove to the bottom of the ocean very quickly and I sat in the dark holding the snipe bag, waiting for the stock to get back to my buy point. Never happened. Stock eventually went to nothing, and fizzled. I went home with a very empty snipe bag.
In spending weeks watching and trading that stock, there was a poster who posted day in and day out on that stock. He claimed he personally knew the CEO of the company, and claimed to thousands of watchers/players like me that he was more honest than Abe Lincoln. At that time I spent the bucks and was able to do private PM's. I began to befriend the guy through PM's, and over time, he began to share some things with me I had never known nor read before. He convinced me that he had been trading stocks for nearly 50 years, and much of that time was in pennystocks.
What caused me to lose gob fulls of hair after every comb was that he said the people who make the MOST profits in pennystocks were the ones who shorted them once the Market Makers started shorting them. He also said those RETAIL shorters traded through off shore accounts so the SEC couldn't do a thing to them, which REALLY meant they could execute naked shorts as long their broker allowed them to. (Then in early 2003 when NBC was going to release their STOCKGATE report on Market Makers and crooked Broker/Dealers stealling billions who were also naked shorting like ugly on an ape, and NBC at the last second dropped the airing of the special, thing got hush-hush real quick).
He shared with me that the GOAL of the professional shorters was to drive the share price of a pennystock to ZERO trading -- hence ZERO buying interest. Their reason? To make essentially guaranteed profit with every dollar they traded with, but he never wanted to tell me how it could be done. I sort of figured it out on my own eventually, but it got CONFRIMED here tonight on this board. NO buy back of the shares.
He claimed to know about half a dozen traders living out of the United States who were millionaries times over doing nothing but mastering the skill of shorting pennystocks and ESPECIALLY naked shorting them.
I recall him also saying, "They NEVER go long; too risky."
It was this guy who told me to stay away from pennystocks that were not consistent in releasing credible PR's in a timely fashion. He said that the only way to play the odds in YOUR favor buying long was to put money to a company that was reasonably predictable about credible PR's. I grew to trust his logic and reason, ESPECIALLY when he shared that what makes one or more Market Makers to decide to short the hell out of a pennystock is when a company is no longer believable, and/or they are hit and miss with their PR's, and of course, nonstop diluting the crap out of their stock.
He was also the first to tell me about THIS sacred trading mantra: "You can make a 100% return on your investment twice as fast going short, if you're a deep pocketed short, and the Market Maker choses to work with you (or you ARE the Market Maker/s) than you can make a 100% return on your investment going long.
After that, it made perfect sense to me why it takes so long for a pennystock to rise in price, but such a small time to drop it in price!