Criminal or just unethical?

My girlfriend works for a small ($500m annual revenue) privately-held company that is in the process of being acquired by a larger publicly-traded conglomerate. After the announcement of the sale (but prior to its completion), Human Resources held a meeting for all employees who were participating in the company's 401(k) program.

At that meeting HR actually encouraged the employees present to cash out (not roll over) their 401(k) accounts prior to the completion of the sale. At first I was confused why a company would offer such poor financial advice, but then it hit me: many of the company's employees would not be fully vested in the company match portion of their 401(k) accounts, and by encouraging the employees to cash out, the outgoing owners could pocket that money. Is something like this even legal? Or is it just extremely unethical behavor?

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