And you don't find the administrative change-over lockup *convenient* or *coincidental* to the time period when everything was falling apart?
Companies in trouble will do anything they legally can to try to prop up the stock price.
However, it is disingenuous for someone to claim that they never had an opportunity to sell their Enron stock and that they had no idea there was value at risk when:
(1) They were perfectly capable of selling their shares the whole time the stock was falling from $87 to $27 and (2) they were perfectly capable of selling all the shares they owned outside of the 401k plan at any time.
Things were falling apart for a year before October 17, 2001 - and emails show that tons of rank and file Enron employees saw it happening months before the market figured it out - and they still sat on their shares.
The lockup was a last-gasp desperate move, not a sudden first sign that something might not be right.
What responsible person watches two-thirds of their savings evaporate in less than a year and still does nothing?