Yeah... too much conspiracy. 
More like simple math.
It's blatantly obvious Eth is and has been wash traded by a single entity on Poloniex for literally months now. Their fee structure is setup where someone pushing that volume would have 0.10% taker fees and 0.0% maker fees, so 0.05% if wash traded.
On a slow Eth day of 20,000 BTC volume, that would be 100 BTC per day in wash trade fees. Does anyone honestly believe the Poloniex Eth manipulators pay that much? Hell no.
20,000*0,05%=10?