by komidor64
It is incredibly tricky to unload stock as a corporate insider, board member or CEO. It has to be scheduled far in advance, cannot be linked to any inside information (these people get a constant stream of inside information), and is often interpreted by investors as a huge bearish signal and can bring down the price of a stock massively if it is a “key” insider, as both of these men clearly are
When Enron execs were charged with insider trading stemming from a 2001 accounting scandal that showed they lied about corporate debt and falsely inflated profit numbers. A bunch of executives got jail time, the CEO initially got a 24 year prison sentence most also got very substantial fines and/or forced to pay restitution to burned shareholders. One guy mostly got away with it however. Lou Pai was the chairman and Chief Executive of Enron’s retail energy division and sold almost 300 million worth of stock before the company went bankrupt. But in his case a judge ordered him to sell these shares as part of a divorce settlement.. He did end up getting fined ~30 million after a settlement that included no jail time or even an admission of wrongdoing, which comes out to about 10% of what his profit was
www.investopedia.com/updates/enron-scandal-summary/
www.wsj.com/articles/SB121736918825994755
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