> Greg Becker used prearranged stock-trade plan to sell shares
He didn't "use a prearranged plan", a plan went into action and sold the shares. Becker had already filed paperwork to sell those shares at that specific time.
To my recollection, that was 10% of his shares. Becker wasn't planning months in advance on the bank smashing into a wall precisely a few days after he sold a measly 10%.
It doesn’t have to be that complicated. Perhaps he saw that the bank was in trouble and made a decision to sell shares when the company was at a 52 week low. His calculus could just be: “with the information I possess, this price could go a lot lower.” He may not have foreseen an insolvency event, or perhaps he knew it was a risk and he sought to hedge it. Or maybe he just sold it randomly at a low price … because.
Even if both the CEO and CFO conspired to hide this, more than just them would know about the trouble and them conspiring to do this. Those individuals would now have no reason not to whisteblow immediately.
I find conspiracies, especially non-governmental, about large organizations incredibly hard to believe because of how difficult they would be to pull off.