Comment by addicted

I doubt that's the whole of it, but I'm sure a past pattern definitely comes into play. As someone once said, we are faithfully true to our defects - we tend to repeat our mistakes.

Someone who plays fast and loose with the law to get their sales bonus doesn't just find Jesus and give up one day. More likely he gets promoted and does it all over again.

But some of the short seller research I've heard of like interviewing ex-employees about internal irregularities is quite clever.

In another case (I think it was a different short seller) he went to the actual physical locations declared on paperwork as "offices" and found them to be empty warehouses.

So this kind of interviewing and boots on ground stuff is next level.