By the way, don't necessarily attribute bad intentions to the founders. Many startups do a terrible job keeping track of who executed what, and it's not uncommo

By the way, don't necessarily attribute bad intentions to the founders. Many startups do a terrible job keeping track of who executed what, and it's not uncommon to find cap tables that have significant errors and omissions. Note that even if your shares are worthless - you can take the tax writeoff, but you do need to get documentation from the company that the common stock had no value so you have something to show the IRS if you're audited.