Or, they retired shares by exchanging the insiders' common shares (insider ownership was at least 63%) for preferred stock of some kind, and then also in an unrelated move diluted some shares to pay off large debts, as they said they were doing. They never PRed the share reduction, so it wasn't promoted to bump up the stock price. The share reduction was discovered by traders, who subsequently caused the stock price to go up. There's a difference. And there could be a simple explanation like this that's in keeping with the company's PRs and that doesn't require any conspiracy theory.