Fraud is hard to prove because it requires providing intention, but certainly some of the elements of fraud are present. I don't remember who was buying, but I

Fraud is hard to prove because it requires providing intention, but certainly some of the elements of fraud are present. I don't remember who was buying, but I think it was literally on "Second Market" before they were acquired by NASDAQ (iirc)... I wanna say that was in the summer of 2015, and was the only official liquidity opportunity that was offered for employees, at least in the last few years that I was aware of. I know some of my colleagues got out with sharespost sales, but those were only the ones who had enough shares qualify for that sale (which, again screwing the lower compensated employees, wouldn't be the customer service teams). In my mind, there's two things that should change: first, and most importantly, we need better protections for employees in these kinds of situations; second (and a distant second, but still salient since it's the only thing that you really can do to protect yourself), people should be more wary. I totally agree that you can't protect yourself from these kinds of deals done in secret. But, you can look for the kinds of warning signs and stay away. I know people who were laid off during one of the multiple rounds of layoffs, and still went back to buy their shares. That's some strong Kool-aid, and it makes very little sense to me why one would do that in this context if they weren't being given some strong misinformation.