I'm not 100% sure this is what the GP was referring to, but a common (and totally legal!) technique to prop up a flat or trending downward company is to start a share buyback program. You take cash that you have no idea what to do with anyway, and rather than return it to investors through a dividend, you start buying back shares. That props up your EPS, since there are fewer shares on the market, and you continue to make your numbers.
In addition, this helps to keep your share price high/growing, which benefits insiders who then sell the stock, knowing that the fundamentals of the business are shaky.
The best part is that all of this is done in the open, it's just that typical retail investors are not necessarily sophisticated enough to understand what's happening, and accept the company's argument that they're buying back their stock because it's "undervalued"
