Yes, there definitely are some groups of people or even individuals who do this with out even being part of this sort of 'organization'.  If you have billions of dollars, you can manipulate markets for sure.  Billionaires and the wealthy in general love doing this.  They simply own the financial power to put a stop on a rising or falling market temporarily.

There are also cases of groups of people who work together particularly to break such barriers.  A lot of times when the Bitcoin market is moving in full bull force, you see somebody placing a sell order for an apparently incredibly large amount of money in an attempt to manipulate.  A lot of people start purchasing simply to destroy that one barrier and let the price continue to rise naturally.

Markets are not a natural phenomena.  In fact, even natural phenomenas are often easy to mess with and manipulate.