From what I understand, pump-and-dumps are illegal if you make untrue promises about future behavior or otherwise are shown to deceive or lie about it. Or if yo

From what I understand, pump-and-dumps are illegal if you make untrue promises about future behavior or otherwise are shown to deceive or lie about it. Or if you are coordinating to have a certain group all sell at an exact same time to leave others holding the bag. I suppose it's a fine line, but to me this seems much more loosely coordinated. I don't think there's been any particular time to sell that has been agreed on, and all the communication is out in a public forum. And the demand for the stock is all based around public knowledge that it was shorted 140% of its market cap. It seems like the difference between insider trading vs if information leaks to the public about a company's plans in which case it's completely legal to trade based on.