I never did any research on it, but I really doubt it. If you just read the Bre-x story, I have no doubts that you would not believe any word of that group. No, it's not the reason. Here is the proof. In the Spring of 1998, KTEL announces that the company goes on the Internet.
Hot debates occur all over chat rooms and message boards.
According to this opinion, they short the stock in 20s. The following is well known. KTEL goes to over 80, burning shorts, causing margin calls and shares that were borrowed were being called in. All the signs of nastiest short squeeze were evident. As you can see, in the first example, traders were wrong in their assumptions and lost.