- Theranos: Elizabeth Holmes founded the health technology company and claimed that Theranos had invented a revolutionary blood-testing device, the Edison. She secured millions in investor funding before it was discovered that the technology didn’t work as advertised, and that Holmes had been misrepresenting its capabilities the entire time.
- ZZZZ Best: Barry Minkow became infamous for taking his carpet cleaning company public after duping auditors into believing they had massive contracts with insurance companies. He even had a stint helping the FBI to uncover white collar fraud before stealing millions from his own congregation – after finding religion while serving time.
- Lehman Brothers: Massive exposure to bad mortgages via highly-leveraged CDOs and MBS led to its bankruptcy and played a pivotal role in the 2008 global financial crisis, triggering a domino effect that shook the entire financial system, causing widespread economic turmoil, job losses, and financial hardship for people around the world.
- Bernie Madoff: Madoff began his career as a penny stock trader and ended up a con artist. He ran one of the largest and longest-running Ponzi schemes in history with promises to pay impossibly consistent high returns with very few losses. It all unraveled when redemption requests piled up during the global financial crisis.
- Bridging Finance: The firm reported consistently good returns in a low-interest-rate environment, which garnered them lots of investors. It seemed too good to be true – until David and Natasha Sharpe – the firm’s president and CIO – were investigated by the Ontario Securities Commission for suspected fund mismanagement, misrepresented loan valuations and failure to disclose conflicts of interest, which resulted in substantial losses for investors.