> There's no point in the harassment unless the harassee knows where it's coming from. But revealing that would allow Wirecard to be caught.

Not really. If you look at the circumstances around this fraud, it's clear that "they are harassing short sellers" would have been just one more grain on the pile of evidence that was willfully ignored as it was going on, or one more legal violation for authorities to look the other way on.

It's not just Wirecard, there are very often media reports of short sellers or whistleblowers being targeted for harassment by companies while they are engaged in ongoing fraud and it rarely makes any difference to broad public perception or regulator action.