I don't know how I feel about this. Here's a paper written by a whale explaining how a Pump n Dump is performed on a large scale. Basically, there's what we call a "Test pump" where they see if the pump is feasible to pull off. This is followed by a quick crash to get rid of any weak hands and the real pump.

It would be incredibly foolish to suggest that this could be anything but what was described in the paper linked above.