Adirondakhi, the trouble is the cost in prosecution. Even lawsuits usually aren't worth the trouble because even if you can prove someone is manipulating your stock, it's a crapshoot whether or not the targeted basher has enough money to make the lawsuit worth the cost. Unless you've got TONS of spare cash to burn and just want to make an example of the individual.

It's very similar to why media piracy is so rampant. Most who do it are just playing the odds that they're not one of the ones anybody goes after, and then there's the fact that most of the status quo don't understand the internet well enough to figure out how these goons operate. It would cost a fortune for the feds to try and prosecute every person out there who posts a lie on a random internet forum.

It's all very sad, and it's starting to make me wonder if this is the real reason that penny stocks have such a negative appeal. Is it really that so many of these companies are doomed to fail? Or are there just too many "independent guerrillas" using these companies for their own quick profits and so as to make success nearly impossible? I know the manipulation schemes are nearly infinite, but how many of them might actually the work of 3rd parties?