Obviously there is a lot of risk involved, but I routinely see penny stocks (OTC) climb to unreasonably high levels of growth over very short periods of time (1-3 days), sometimes up to 9000% growth. I think it's obvious these are victims of pump-and-dump schemes.
Is it legal, and/or safe(ish) to attempt to capitalize once this has been realized? I'm not going to wind up in the SEC's crosshairs if I short a bunch of this stock hedging on its inevitable return to "normal" levels?
Maybe I'm missing something (newer investor) and there is a reason most other folks don't attempt this?