As usual, a very common tactics for major markets manipulators. Pump and dump/dump and pump? Michael went all in with the bears and if the bulls kept on going, his health and wealth will hell. Usually, bears will pay and hire tons of their "usual friends" to spread massive doom and gloom propaganda throughout the media channels with "well researched, rational analysis, all the evidence of a super major crash is coming and it's a sell or die situation" to profit from the retail investors. SEC knew about it eons ago but you can't stop freedom of speech, aka "media" from talking so it's a major loophole exploited by institute investors and the movers/shakers behind the scenes. Some of them breaks up major shares of a company into multiple holders and play the same game (easier to get caught but as long as the shares are small enough and they deliberately took some losses to make it look real, its usually not easy to "prove/detect". AMC stock manipulation is a good read: 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.smu-seic.com/amp/amc-manipulation-of-the-market