It's mechanically possible to come up with fake accusations, take on the short position, publish the accusations, and cash out on the immediate stock drop, sinc

It's mechanically possible to come up with fake accusations, take on the short position, publish the accusations, and cash out on the immediate stock drop, since just publishing the report is itself a market moving event, betting that the SEC either won't notice or won't bring down the hammer hard enough to wipe out their gains. This might have happened before with a different short selling institution in 2019 when an investigator working with a hedge fund published a report accusing GE of accounting fraud[1]. The accusations led nowhere and GE's stock rebounded rapidly after an initial ~10% drop. I couldn't find details on who the fund was or if they made money cashing out on the dip. I don't think that's what Hindenburg is doing here, and they have a pretty good track record of spotting fraud (IIRC they've called it correctly on a lot of bad companies in the past few years). [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Markopolos#2019_General_Electric_fraud_allegation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Markopolos#2019_General_...