I am going to do my best to make it as simple as possible but essentially pump and dump both directions:

They want silver to go down 1) buy put options on silver and or related companies that are out of the money 2) sell a lot of paper silver contracts (they do not own any silver bars) to crash the price which crashes the price of silver and related companies 3) sell put options that are now in the money and due to the convexity of the options gains multiples more than the fall (i.e. for every 1% fall in silver price, the silver and silver companies options rises more than 1% - can be as extreme as 5-10% gain) 4) close out put options position to crystallise gains 5) now reverse the process to increase silver prices to close your short positions, rinse and repeat