Yes. Criminals who pretend to be a finance professionals buy 144 restricted stock from a company at a discount to the bid. Then that criminal shorts against his restricted stock, otherwise known as shorting against the box. The criminal pushes the stock down to a low PPS by constant daily shorting so that when the 90 days of restriction is over they cover their short with those shares. These same criminals either hire message board posters to post negative posts on these stocks and are thus complicit in the crime or they post negative themselves.