Is it possible the shorter is buying the short positions...

Is it possible the shorter is buying the short positions themselves but picking all the loose fruit from sellers along the way, this would explain all the cross trades

for example the Algorithm would load the buy side and the sell side, every time another seller comes to the front of the que they buy up into it whilst simultaneously pulling their sell orders to the back of the que allowing other legit sell orders to the front, then they buy up into it again.
All the cross trades would be them simply selling to themselves then they pickup as many of the sellers as they can who willingly dump into the buy side.

it would show as 81m shares in a short position but they’ve actually accumulated them in another account and along the way accumulated everyone else’s along the way. Very easy to cover themselves on the way back up then without giving up the accumulated shares

After all it would make sense that if you want to accumulate the best way to do it is drive the stock down so people sell, much harder to accumulate on a rising price as your competing with the stampede.

Not sure if this would be possible or even legal but would be a logical tactic