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?
Nobody knew it would go to -0- or into the world's largest bankruptcy at the time. Who knew whether Dynegy or someone else might pay a premium for their shares? We only know in hindsight.
the company mgmt was pumping it all the way during that time - like the rest of wall street, pumping it to keep the little guy in, while dumping and shorting their own shares.
the period of the lates 90s into 2000, was the biggest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the elites, in US history. and very few have been prosecuted for it.