Short and long term cycles within the market, as well as other factors are much more likely to cause these price movements. The market has sufficient liquidity to soak up these 50-100 BTC trades quite easily. If you look at the volume, you will quickly realise this as well.
These articles are written up most likely for attention, or sensationalist headlines. Price movements are not determined by a single event, ever, period.
I don't think that it is irrelevant. The total market cap of cryptocurrency is around $220 billion (the net worth of coins in free-float would be much lower), and the amount mentioned here represents almost 1.5% of that amount. And this is from a single scam. The real extent of the PLUS Token scam is still unknown. I have read reports claiming more than 10 million individuals scammed (most of them in China and South Korea). Last month, CipherTrace released a statement claiming that the real losses from this scam may be much higher than $3 billion. They also claimed that a lot of this stolen money is being dumped on various crypto-exchanges (which explains the recent bearish price movement).