A bunch of companies did it simply because they thought it was best practice, not for specifically immoral means. The majority of people who did it accidentally and could prove it with a paper trail of trying to follow auditors best practices got off with fines / warnings, which seems appropriate.
Back dating stock options (i'm still assuming that is what the situation was, I do not know) certainly was commonplace, I don't know how many people really knew the law.
I DO think there is something that should set off someone's spidy sense that "Wait, we're changing the dates on these options that already exist?" or "We're lying about the dates / price these options were really granted at?".
To me at least that raises a lot of questions just changing the date on something financal to say it happened in the past like magic. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be very nervous about that.
