Yeah. That makes the whole idea of a buy back sound just plain stupid. They cannot "legally" be buying back shares unless it's announced. If it's not announced, then it cannot happen, "legally."
If it's happening illegally then everyone's shares are almost for sure going to be worthless. Someone will file a law suit or the government will figure it out and shut this scam down.
Given the state of the recent "DD" it's not surprising some people are falling for this.
In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein people of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority