Before fully jumping into the new year, don’t forget what happened last year. Here’s a recap of the biggest business blunders of 2025.

Kissing away all that CEO money

When you’re CEO, you shouldn’t be dating the hired help or handing out lucrative corporate contracts to your lover.

In 2025, Nestlé CEO Laurent Freixe was fired for an undisclosed romantic relationship with a subordinate. Kohl’s CEO was fired after reportedly giving his girlfriend a multimillion-dollar consulting contract. And most memorably, Andy Byron, the CEO of a startup called Astronomer, resigned after attending a Coldplay concert.

Byron was spotlighted on a Jumbotron while canoodling his HR director Kristin Cabot. Their panicked reaction prompted Coldplay frontman Chris Martin to call them out: “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”

“I was so embarrassed and so horrified,” Cabot said in a December New York Times interview. “I’m the head of H.R. and he’s the C.E.O. It’s, like, so cliché and so bad.”

Cabot lost her job, and that should have been the end of it. But unfortunately, the Internet is a cruel place, and she’s still the target of cold shoulders from friends and associates, doxxing and even death threats in what became #coldplaygate online.

Read More:

• Smile And Wave (Business Blunders)

• The Chocolate Lover (Business Blunders)

• Million-Dollar Baby (Business Blunders)

• Lost In Love (Business Blunders)

The recession that keeps getting away

Economists warned of a looming recession throughout Joe Biden’s presidency, and they continued to chirp like Chicken Littles as Donald Trump took the reins.

In April, Trump’s tariff tantrum sent the stock market down about 10%, but it closed the year near all-time highs, buoyed by rampant AI spending.

During April’s panic, major Wall Street banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, upped their odds for a 2025 recession. So did many other observers. But it never came.

“I think we’re very close, if not in, a recession now,” BlackRock CEO Larry Fink told CNBC in April.

Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, qualified his call for a recession based on whatever the hell Trump would actually do with tariffs, beyond the bluster.

“If they stay at these levels, we will absolutely have a recession in 2025,” he said on CNBC in April.

At the time, Trump was threatening triple-digit tariffs on many countries, products and commodities. But he often backed off, eased down or delayed implementation. By November his moves resulted in a rise in the effective tariff rate of about 17% – which is still the highest it’s been since 1935, but not as bad as initially announced.

So here’s where we are now: The nation’s gross domestic product is expected to show annual growth of about 1.9% for 2025, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia survey. That’s down sharply from 2.8% growth in 2024, but hardly recessionary.

Also, there’s been no progress on inflation, but at least it didn’t get worse. Despite Trump’s promise to end inflation on day one, the consumer price index has clocked in at 2.7% for the 12 months ending in November, which is exactly where it was last year at this time.

Still, Americans remain unhappy about an economy Trump promised to fix. Job growth has slowed dramatically. At 4.6%, the unemployment rate is at the highest level in five years, and it’s up from 4.2% from the same period last year.

Consumer sentiment plunged throughout the year and remains 30% below where it was under Biden. Consumer confidence peaked in January and has been on the decline for the past five consecutive months. Consequently, Trump’s approval rating on the economy is what’s actually in a recession.

Read More:

• The Idiot Economy (Business Blunders)

• Trumpflation (Business Blunders)

• Stop Counting! Stop Counting! (Business Blunders)

The Tesla Chainsaw Massacre

Elon Musk spent 2025 enraging the kind of people who might buy an EV.

He swung far to the right with his politics and then he took a chainsaw to goverment jobs after President Trump put him in charge of the Department Of Government Efficiency.

Musk spent about a quarter billion dollars backing Trump only to watch his sponsored president let EV tax incentives expire. Then Musk got into a public spat with Trump that he could not win.

No surprise that Tesla sales fell 9% in 2025. And that Tesla’s Chinese competitor BYD has unseated it as the world’s biggest electric vehicle maker.

Nevertheless, Musk is still on track to become the world’s first trillionaire. Tesla stock dipped below $215 in April but it’s finished the year around $450.

Read More: Musk Chickens Out To TACO

Exiting X

Linda Yaccarino must have finally realized the blunder she made taking a job from Musk as CEO of X. She quit in July, saying very little about her decision.

Yaccarino had to know what she was getting into with Musk’s endless antics. But in 2023 she left a top job at NBCUniversal to be with him. At NBCUniversal, she was responsible for more than $10 billion in annual revenue and oversaw all global, national and local advertising sales and partnerships.

Now she’s peddling GLP-1s at some relatively unknown health management startup called eMed Population Health.

Read More: Better To Be An Ex-CEO Than An X CEO

Doing Business With Epstein

Jeffrey Epstein had been a registered sex offender since 2008. Anyone maintaining a “professional relationship” with him after that date has explaining to do.

As the Epstein files slowly trickled out, the explanations coming from Goldman Sachs General Counsel Kathy Ruemmler, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, celebrity guru Deepak Chopra, and others, set new lows in our anything-for-money economy.

Read More:

• Networking With A Pedophile (Business Blunders)

• Meditations With A Sex Offender (Business Blunders)

• Winter Is Coming For Summers (Business Blunders)

• Too Big To Jail (Business Blunders)

JPMorgan Chastened

What an embarrassing year for the big, swinging dealmakers at JPMorgan Chase.

First, a young charlatan named Charlie Javice was sentenced after ripping them off for $175 million by selling them a bogus internet startup. Then they have to pay for her criminal defense thanks to the contract language in the deal they struck with her.

Then Javice’s lawyers started billing the bank for luxury hotels, upscale restaurant meals, first-class air fares, and a dizzying array of incidentals, including $529 worth of gummy bears and cellulite cream for their flabby asses.

So far, lawyers for Javice and her convicted co-executive Oliver Amar have billed JPMorgan Chase for $142 million. And so far a judge is making the bank pay.

Read More:

• JPMorgan Chumps (Business Blunders)

• JPMorgan Chase Can Check Their Butts (Business Blunders)

• It’s A Bear Market For JPMorgan Chase (Business Blunders)

All that’s ailing UnitedHealth

When CEOs decide to step down for “personal reasons,” you can bet it’s not to spend more time with their long-neglected families.

UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty made a surprise exit in May. And it was for “personal reasons,” the company said in a press release.

Witty abandoned a job paying him annual compensation of $26 million because … well …

Maybe it’s the ongoing criminal investigation into fraudulent Medicare billing practices. Or the denial-of-care outrage it engenders. Or the populist cheers for suspect Luigi Mangione following the cold-blooded murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson. Or maybe it was just the more than 40% drop in UnitedHealth’s stock price.

Take your pick. This health care giant is sick.

Read More:

• UnitedHealthScare (Business Blunders)

• Natural Born Killers (Business Blunders)

Kicking guests to the curb

Get Out! That’s essentially the message Marriott International gave some of its guests when it ended its relationship with San Francisco-based Sonder Holdings in November.

Somehow an iconic name in the hospitality industry had partnered with an overextended, short-term rental company, and the breakup was messier than a Hollywood divorce.

Some guest got notices to immediately vacate despite their long-planned trips. Others were simply locked out of their lodging. Many spent hundreds or thousands of dollars more to find last-minute accommodations.

Social media posts raged, headlines screamed, and it may be a long time before some people will ever check into a Marriott again.

Read More: Getting Sondered

Cash for clunkers

The 2008 financial crisis began on used car lots when issues with subprime auto lending presaged far bigger issues with mortgage lending and debt securities.

In 2025, two huge bankruptcies sounded the alarm and embarrassed some of the nation’s biggest lenders, including JPMorgan Chase, Fifth Third Bank, Jeffries Financial Group, UBS and Blackstone.

In September, both Tricolor Holdings – a once-prominent subprime auto lender and used car dealer – and First Brands Group – an auto parts conglomerate – filed bankruptcy.

Tricolor executives have been charged with fraud. And investigators are still sifting through the wreckage at First Brands trying to figure out where $2.3 billion went.

Read More:

• Going All Enron On Them (Business Blunders)

• Parts Is Parts (Business Blunders)

Crypto tycoon? No, crypto buffoon.

Crypto crook Do Kwon received a 15 year sentence in December for perpetrating a $40 billion fraud. Prosecutors called his Terraform Labs one of the largest financial frauds in all of history.

In an age of crypto hype and astonishing overconfidence, venture capitalists lavished the 30-something Stanford grad with loot. Firms – including Arrington Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Galaxy Digital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners – fell all over themselves in the fear of missing out on something so new, nobody could really understand it.

At the top of his game, Kwon mocked his social media critics as “idiots” and haughtily told one of them:“I don’t debate the poor on Twitter.” Then, after his critics proved absolutely correct, he split the country and had to be extradited back to the U.S. to face trial.

Read More:

• Kwon Don’t (Business Blunders)

• Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word (Business Blunders)

Bad Oompa-Loompa

The risk manager turned out to be one of the biggest risks at Mars Inc.

In September, Paul R. Steed, 58, pleaded guilty to stealing more than $28 million from the company through a complex scheme involving sugar trade credits. He carried an impressive title: “Global Price Risk Manager for Mars Wrigley’s Global Cocoa Enterprise.”

Forget about the 100 Grand Bars. Steed took the gum and candy maker for a Doublemint.

Read More: Mars Bars (Business Blunders)

Still Playing With Fyre

After Billy McFarland got out of prison after his infamous Fyre Festival scam, he started selling $25,000 tickets for Fyre 2.

It was supposed to be a three-day event on Isla Mujeres off the coast of Cancun, Mexico, from May 30 through June 2, 2025. But of course, it didn’t happen.

Overcoming a prison sentence is one thing, but two documentaries on his Fyre debacle by both Netflix and Hulu are not easily overcome.

Nevertheless, McFarland somehow pulled off a music festival in Honduras in December, dubbed PHNX. He had artists, fans, bathrooms and at least something that resembled food. Just a few hundred people attended, it got little notice from the press, and it probably ran at a loss.

It wasn’t exactly what you’d call a phoenix rising from the ashes.

Read More:

• All Fyred Up Again (Business Blunders)

• Billy McFarland – Fyre Festival (Business Blunders Hall Of Shame)

Even Buffett Blunders

It turns out mixing H.J. Heinz Co. and Kraft Foods Group in 2015 wasn’t such a tasty recipe.

In September, the combined food giants announced they would split. It only took 10 years and a 60% decline in shareholder value to come to this realization. And the move brought Warren Buffett, who championed the merger, to a moment of reflection as he finally approached his retirement at age 95.

“It certainly didn’t turn out to be a brilliant idea to put them together,” he told CNBC, “but I don’t think taking them apart will fix it.”

Read More: Buffett’s Big Blunder

Here’s to a whole new year of blunders

Thank you readers for sticking with me though yet another year of stomach-churning business news. I hope you were able to laugh at developments that should leave us all crying.

Financial history repeats itself because it’s almost impossible to keep up with its endless follies.

Just like our toxic politics, the latest outrage is often enough to make us forget the last one. But it’s important to keep track if there is any hope for a fair and honest economy.

Thanks, especially, to my paid subscribers, and to my many free subscribers who share, like and comment on my work Your support means so more than I can express.

Happy New Year.

– Al

Subscribe now

Read More:

• Best-Read Blunders Of 2025 (Business Blunders)

• The Biggest Business Blunders Of 2024 (Business Blunders)

Related Blunders:

• Criminal corporations

• CEO hubris

• Executive misconduct

• Ponzi schemes

• Hall of Shame

• Blunder history

The history of big business is littered with more wreckage than the Bermuda Triangle.

Miscommunications, bad mergers, regulatory violations, product failures, reputational blowups and outrageous frauds have sunk more companies that most of us can remember. But great business minds will remember all of these failures as cautionary tales.

Learn from the deals gone bad, the launches that flopped, and the multibillion-dollar mishaps that have cost companies and careers dearly.

Here’s a free compendium of the biggest blunders in corporate history, many of which still reverberate through the news cycle to this day.

Read More Blunders

Tour The Business Blunders Hall Of Shame

Kodak Shelves Digital Photography – 1975-2025

The Setup: An iconic company with the dominant market share in film invented digital camera in 1975. Then it shelved the technology so it could keep selling film.

The Decision: Ignored its own innovation to protect its film business.

The Blunder: Made the wrong choice in an innovator’s dilemma. Underestimated competitors’ ability to also develop digital photography.

The Fallout: Kodak filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2012. And in August 2025, it issued a “going concern” warning, saying its finances “raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

What It Cost: Tens of billions in lost market capitalization, a lost opportunity and a company that became a shell of its former self.

Lessons:

• Innovations won’t stay on the shelf forever.

• Cannibalize your company before others do.

• A solid legacy business offers no promise in the fast of fast-evolving technology.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 8.5/10

Read More: Momma don’t take my Kodachrome (Business Blunders)

FTX Collapse – 2022

The Setup: FTX, founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, rose rapidly to become one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, valued at $32 billion.

The Decision: Used customer funds to cover risky bets at sister hedge fund Alameda Research while marketing FTX as a safe, trustworthy platform.

The Blunder: A balance-sheet leak exposed the commingling of funds. A liquidity crisis followed, and billions in customer assets evaporated.

The Fallout: FTX declared bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud, and crypto markets plunged globally.

Lessons:

• A lack of oversight and corporate governance in financial services can lead to disaster.

• Silicon Valley doesn’t always pick winners. Sometimes it picks losers.

• A young, supposed brainiac can’t be trusted with large sums of money.

Cost: Estimated $8 billion to $10 billion in customer funds lost.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 10/10

Read More: Sam In The Slam (Business Blunders)

Business Blunders Hall Of Shame

Quibi’s Instant Implosion – 2020

The Setup: Movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman raised nearly $2 billion to create a short-form video streaming service.

The Decision: Launched Quibi in 2020, betting people wanted “premium” 10-minute shows.

The Blunder: Thinking people would pay for short videos when TikTok was free. Spending outrageously on talent, including paying Reese Witherspoon $6 million for voiceover work on six-minute episodes of a nature series.

The Fallout: Quibi shut down in just six months.

Lessons:

• You can’t brute-force consumer behavior with money.

• You can’t charge for what competitors give away free.

• Big names in Hollywood and business don’t succeed at everything.

Cost: $1.75 billion gone in less than a year.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 9/10

Read More: They built it, but people did not come: the cautionary tale of Quibi (The Guardian)

WeWork’s IPO Implosion – 2019

The Setup: WeWork branded itself not as a flexible workspace company, but as a revolutionary “tech” startup transforming office life.

The Decision: Pursued a highly publicized initial public stock offering at a $47 billion valuation, while founder Adam Neumann maintained unusual control and burned through cash at alarming rates.

The Blunder: The IPO filing revealed staggering losses, questionable governance, and eccentric leadership behavior.

The Fallout: The IPO collapsed, Neumann was forced out, and SoftBank bailed the company out at a fraction of its peak valuation.

Lessons:

• Inflating valuations with hype and style will backfire.

• Governance and business fundamentals matter.

• Too much control in the hands of one man is a recipe for losses.

Cost: Valuation collapsed from $47 billion to under $10 billion.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 9/10

Read More: Why did WeWork fail, and what is next for the company? (Reuters)

Boeing 737 MAX Crisis – 2018

The Setup: Boeing was under pressure to compete with Airbus’s fuel-efficient A320neo.

The Decision: To save time and money, Boeing updated the existing 737 design with larger engines instead of designing a new plane, relying on software to mitigate handling issues.

The Blunder: The software was poorly explained to pilots, lacked redundancy and was not disclosed clearly. The result was two fatal crashes – Lion Air 610 in 2018, Ethiopian Airlines 302 in 2019 – that killed 346 people.

The Fallout: The 737 MAX was grounded worldwide for nearly 20 months, costing Boeing billions in lost revenue, settlements and reputational damage.

Lessons:

• Cutting corners on safety to save costs destroys trust.

• Transparency and pilot training are non-negotiable in aviation.

• Too much focus on quarterly results and lead to long-term disasters.

Cost: Over $20 billion in direct costs, plus long-term brand damage.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 10/10

Read More: Con Air: Fly the felonious skies with Boeing (Business Blunders)

Elon Musk’s Costly Tweet – 2018

The Setup: Tesla founder Elon Musk grew increasingly frustrated with short sellers.

The Decision: Tweeted about taking Tesla private at $420 a share, claiming the funding for this transaction was secured.

The Blunder: Musk’s claim triggered an investigation from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Fallout: Tesla and Musk were slapped with $40 million in fines. Musk stepped down as chairman. Investors sued, but a jury found Musk didn’t commit fraud.

Lessons:

• Tweets can move markets and provoke regulators.

• CEOs must check their egos before jumping into a fray.

• When it comes to public statements that can affect stock prices, the truth matters.

Cost: About $10 billion wiped from Tesla’s market capitalization. Fines of $40 million. And the tweet was perhaps the expensive 61 characters in history.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 7.5/10

Read More: Jury Musk didn’t defraud investors with 2018 Tesla tweets (Associated Press)

Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Recall – 2016

The Setup: Samsung developed a flagship smartphone aimed at premium leadership with a compressed launch cycle.

The Decision: Shipped them all over the world with ultra‑dense batteries under tight tolerances.

The Blunder: Volatile batteries led to runaway fires and an initial recall replaced phones with similarly risky units.

The Fallout: Global bans on flights. Full discontinuation of product. Loss of market share. Shattered trust in the brand.

What It Cost: About $17 billion in lost sales and direct costs.

Lessons:

• Reliability is a feature that customers can’t see until it disappears.

• A recall must be decisive and final.

• The supply chain should be as strategic as the design.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 8/10

Read More: Note 7 fiasco could burn a $17 billion hole in Samsung accounts (Reuters)

Theranos Fraud – 2015

The Setup: Theranos, founded by Elizabeth Holmes, promised to revolutionize healthcare with a device that could run scores of tests on a single drop of blood.

The Decision: Raised hundreds of millions from investors and cut deals with Walgreens and Safeway while keeping its technology secret and unverified.

The Blunder: The technology never worked as promised. Investigative reporting exposed the deception.

The Fallout: Theranos collapsed, Holmes and Chief Operating Officer Sunny Balwani were convicted of fraud, and investors lost nearly everything.

Lessons Learned:

• Vision and charisma can’t replace working technology.

• Transparency and peer review are essential in health tech.

• Silicon Valley is a sucker for tech hype.

Cost: More than $900 million in investor losses and extreme reputational damage to Silicon Valley.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 10/10

Read More: A Bloody Mess (Business Blunders)

Business Blunders Hall Of Shame

JC Penney’s Fumbled Transformation – 2011-2013

The Setup: JC Penney was struggling yet still a household name.

The Decision: Hired Apple retailing superstar Ron Johnson to transform a struggling retailer. Johnson, credited with creating the Apple store, scrapped coupons, discounts and sales thinking customers wanted Apple-style elegance.

The Blunder: Failing to understand the extent to which discounts and sales drove JC Penney’s core business.

The Fallout: Johnson was fired in less than 2 years and JC Penney’s decline accelerated.

Lessons:

• Know your customers.

• Don’t expect to change the culture of a business overnight when it’s been around for more than a century.

• What works for emerging electronics might not work for declining department stores.

Cost: Billions in lost revenue and brand damage.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 7.5/10

Read More: The 5 Big Mistakes That Led to Ron Johnson’s Ouster at JC Penney (Time)

Volkswagen Dieselgate – 2015

The Setup: A global auto giant makes an aggressive diesel expansion in the U.S. and European Union amid tightening emissions rules.

The Decision: Installed software to cheat emissions tests.

The Blunder: Deliberate law‑breaking. Failure to recognize electric vehicles and hybrids as the superior low-emissions technology.

The Fallout: Global recalls. Years of litigation and enduring reputational harm. Top leadership churn. Criminal prosecutions and an aging former CEO still awaiting trial as of August 2025.

What It Cost: More than $30 billion in fines, buybacks and remediation.

Lessons:

• Cheating can cost far more than compliance.

• A culture that normalizes corner‑cutting invites disaster.

• Regulatory risk is enterprise risk.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 8.5/10

Read More: Slipping Away From Prosecutors (Business Blunders)

Deutsche Bank’s Fat Finger – 2015

The Setup: An international banking giant dealing with a complex settlement process for structured financial instruments.

The Decision: Someone accidentally entered the gross instead of the net amount on a huge fund transfer.

The Blunder: A whopping $6 billion wired in error. Controls didn’t catch the error before the money was sent. Getting the money back was a process that embarrassed the entire firm

The Fallout: Money returned. Phew! But controls needed a complete review and a reputational bruise took years to heal.

What It Cost: Operational pain and $6 billion briefly at risk.

Lessons:

• Large settlements require stringent controls.

• The platform user experience for high‑stakes inputs must prevent obvious mistakes.

• “Human error” is a design problem.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 5.5/10

Read More: Deutsche Bank handed a hedge fund $6 billion on a 'fat finger' error (Business Insider)

Microsoft Buys Nokia – 2013

The Setup: Microsoft wanted to compete with Apple and Android in smartphones.

The Decision: Bought Nokia’s phone division for more than $7 billion.

The Blunder: The Windows Phone never caught on with consumers or developers.

The Fallout: Microsoft wrote off $8 billion, effectively killing its phone ambitions.

Lessons:

• You can’t buy market dominance when you’re too late to the trend.

• A merger can’t always save a company losing market share to competitors.

• Technology moves faster that mergers.

Cost: A writer-off of more than $8 billion.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 8.5/10

Read More: Microsoft axes 7,800 after disastrous $7.6bn Nokia failure (Wired)

Google Glass Lands On Its Ass – 2013

The Setup: Google hyped “Glass” as the future of wearable tech.

The Decision: Sold unfinished prototypes for $1,500 to early adopters.

The Blunder: Privacy fears, poor battery life, and lack of clear use for these horrendous-looking spectacles.

The Fallout: Glass was discontinued for consumers within two years.

Lessons:

• Wearable products require fashionable designs.

• Who wants to meet somebody with a camera on their face? Is it on? Why are you recording me?

• Don’t launch a prototype as a mass-market product.

Cost: Hundreds of millions in wasted research and development, but what’s a few hundred million to Google?

Blunder Rating: 🔥 6.5/10

Read More: Google Glass Is Gone—Here's Why VR Needs to Learn From That Failure (Lifewire)

Dish Network Buys Blockbuster – 2011

The Setup: Dish Network was searching for a way to pivot into digital entertainment and compete with Netflix.

The Decision: Dish acquired Blockbuster out of bankruptcy for $320 million, betting it could leverage the brand, retail footprint, and subscriber base to build a streaming competitor.

The Blunder: Dish bought a fading physical retail business and tried to retrofit it for a streaming future it didn’t fully understand. The stores were liabilities, not assets, and the Blockbuster brand had already become synonymous with obsolescence.

The Fallout: Dish shuttered more than 1,700 stores by 2014, effectively abandoning the retail model it had just purchased. Blockbuster’s attempt at a digital comeback failed to gain traction against Netflix and other emerging streaming platforms.

Lessons:

• Buying a disrupted business model isn’t a path to the future.

• Legacy brands can carry baggage as well as recognition.

• Transformation requires more than acquisition. It demands a fundamentally different strategy and timing.

What It Cost: $320 million acquisition plus ongoing operating losses and shutdown costs, with little to show in long-term strategic value.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 7.5/10

Read More: Dish Network to close all Blockbuster stores, lay off 2,800

BP Deepwater Horizon – 2010

The Setup: High‑pressure, deepwater drilling to meet production targets. Tight timelines and cost pressures.

The Decision: Proceeded with risky drilling plans despite warning signs and known safety gaps.

The Blunders: Well integrity failures. Lax safety culture. Crisis response missteps, including a CEO who tried to minimize the disaster by saying a big ocean could handle the damage.

The Fallout: Largest marine oil spill. Criminal and civil penalties. A multiyear cleanup and a long-standing erosion of trust.

What It Cost: About $65 billion in fines, settlements, cleanup and other related costs.

Lessons:

• Safety shortcuts can compound into catastrophes.

• Crisis plans require resources and drills.

• To overcome a disaster, a company needs credible management.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 9/10

Read More: Lewis: BP’s Hayward is haywired on spill, er, leak (Dow Jones/Denver Post)

Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy – 2008

The Setup: A highly leveraged investment bank loaded with mortgage risk.

The Decision: Piled on more leverage and illiquid assets as the housing cycle sparked a global financial crisis.

The Blunders: Underestimating risk. Accepting poor collateral. And a crisis communications effort that came too late for a government bailout.

The Fallout: The largest bankruptcy in U.S. history at the time. Systemic contagion. Emergency policy interventions for rival firms.

What It Cost: The end of the nation’s fourth-largest investment bank, which traced its roots back to 1844. About $613 billion in liabilities listed in its bankruptcy filing, plus colossal value destruction for shareholders and distrust of the entire global financial system.

Lessons:

• Liquidity evaporates quickly when confidence breaks.

• Leverage amplifies bad judgements.

• Companies need living wills just in case they die like this one.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 10/10

Read More: The Collapse of Lehman Brothers: A Case Study (Investopedia)

Bernard Madoff Ponzi Scheme – 2008

The Setup: Investors revered a former Nasdaq chairman turned investment peddler, who was touting a track record that was just too good to be true.

The Decision: Instead of admitting poor performance, Madoff ran a decades‑long scam, paying old investors with new money in a classic Ponzi scheme.

The Blunder: Fabricated statements. Ignored red flags. And a reliance on a phony reputation.

The Fallout: Collapsed during the financial crisis. Criminal convictions. Life‑altering losses for victims.

What It Cost: About $65 billion in reported paper losses.

Lessons:

• If returns never vary, be suspicious.

• Trust needs verification.

• Concentration risk isn’t just about assets. It’s about money managers, too.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 10/10

Read More: Married To Madoff (Business Blunders)

Business Blunders Hall Of Shame

BlackBerry Dismisses the iPhone – 2007-2010

The Setup: Research in Motion’s BlackBerry was the smartphone leader with more than a 50% market share.

The Decision: Executives dismissed the iPhone with co-CEO Jim Balsillie calling it “one more entrant into an already very busy space.”

The Blunder: The company ignored touchscreens and apps while clinging to mechanical keyboards.

The Fallout: Market share collapsed to near zero.

Lessons:

• Consumer preferences can change swiftly amid emerging technology, even to the point of switching from keyboards to touchscreens.

• Market leadership is not guaranteed to last forever.

• Arrogance blinds companies to seismic shifts.

Cost: Tens of billions in market value evaporated.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 9/10

Read More: How Blackberry Fell (The New Yorker)

LifeLock’s Steal My Identity Stunt – 2006

The Setup: LifeLock built its brand on the promise that it could protect customers from identity theft. To prove it, CEO Todd Davis decided to put the company’s claims to the ultimate test.

The Decision: Davis published his real Social Security number in advertisements, billboards, and even a full page ad in The Wall Street Journal, daring criminals to steal his identity.

The Blunder: Davis’s identity was reportedly stolen at least 13 times, exposing the core flaw in LifeLock’s marketing: identity theft protection isn’t foolproof—especially when you hand criminals the keys.

The Fallout: The Federal Trade Commission accused LifeLock of deceptive advertising, arguing the company overstated its protection capabilities. In 2010, LifeLock agreed to a $12 million settlement and was forced to overhaul its marketing claims. Later that year it agreed to a $100 million settlement for violating a 2010 federal court order that required the company to secure consumers’ personal information and prohibited the company from deceptive advertising.

Lessons:

• Marketing bravado can’t outrun reality, especially in when it comes to data security.

• If your product promises protection, don’t attempt something that may prove the opposite.

• Regulators have no sense of humor when consumers are misled.

What It Cost: Millions in FTC penalties, huge reputational damage and years of regulatory scrutiny.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 9/10

Read More: LifeLock settles with FTC over ‘deceptive’ ads (NBC News)

Yahoo Misses Google And Facebook – 1998-2006

The Setup: Yahoo was the dominant internet portal of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The Decision: The company passed on buying Google for $1 million in 1998. Later, it passed on a chance to acquire Facebook for $1 billion.

The Blunder: Twice ignoring transformational Internet companies.

The Fallout: Yahoo faded into irrelevance. It eventually sold for $4.8 billion in 2017.

Lessons:

• Smaller competitors may have something to teach you.

• Don’t underestimate competition in an age of rampant technological changes.

• Maintaining market dominance often requires strategic acquisitions.

Cost: Missing out on possibly trillions in combined market value and market domination.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 9/10

Read More: How Yahoo Blew It (Wired)

Enron Collapse – 2001

The Setup: Wall Street loved Enron company, blissfully unaware of the complex trading and bogus accounting it deployed to fuel relentless growth.

The Decision: Hid debt in off‑balance‑sheet entities and use mark‑to‑model revenues to sustain the illusion.

The Blunders: Systemic accounting fraud. Fatal conflicts of interest with the auditor, Arthur Andersen. Executives cashing out leaving investors with the mounting risks..

The Fallout: Bankruptcy. Auditor run out of business. Executives jailed. Sweeping governance reforms follow.

What It Cost: About $63 billion in assets wiped and vast shareholder value destroyed.

Lessons:

• Transparency is a better path to success than deceitfully engineered earnings.

• Independence is non‑negotiable for the board and the auditors.

• Bad incentives create bad behavior.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 10/10

Read More: Enron Was A Parody Of Itself (Business Blunders)

Business Blunders Hall Of Shame

Borders Partners with Amazon – 2001

The Setup: A struggling book store needed an online sales strategy.

The Decision: Outsourced online book sales to Amazon.

The Blunder: Customers went straight to Amazon. Borders trained them to shop online instead of its stores.

The Fallout: Borders filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

Lessons:

• Don’t fail to track shifts in consumer shopping behavior.

• If you don’t innovate, you will stagnate.

• Never steer your customers to your biggest rival.

Cost: Borders lost everything. Amazon became the untouchable book seller.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 8.5/10

Read More: Borders files for bankruptcy, to close 200 stores (Reuters)

AOL-Time Warner Merger – 2000

The Setup: AOL dominated dial‑up Internet access. Time Warner owned premium cable TV content. Dot‑com euphoria made the “old” and “new” media seem like a profitable matchup.

The Decision: The companies announced a $165 billion, stock‑swap merger in January 2000, banking on a synergy that never came together.

The Blunders: The move came just before the dot-com bubble blew. AOL stock cratered. A culture clash stalled integration. And the plan for synergies didn’t really exist.

The Fallout: The combined company posted a record loss. It brand and employee morale sank. And the company ended up spinning off AOL years later.

What It Cost: The company took a $99 billion write down, and suffered a decade of distraction.

Lessons:

• Don’t peg mega‑mergers to market hype.

• Integration involves people, not just spreadsheets.

• Stock‑swaps always amplify valuation risk. It’s often just funny money.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 9.5/10

Read More: How the AOL-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong (New York Times)

Blockbuster Rejects Netflix – 2000

The Setup: Blockbuster was the king of movie rentals with 9,000 stores worldwide. Netflix was a fledgling DVD-by-mail service.

The Decision: Netflix’s Reed Hastings offered to sell the company to Blockbuster for $50 million.

The Blunder: Blockbuster executives laughed Hastings out of the room.

The Fallout: Netflix grew into a $200 billion streaming titan. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010.

Lessons:

• Be careful not to underestimate a disruptor.

• Retail locations are expensive. The Post Office, which Netflix used before streaming to deliver DVDs, is not.

• Dismissing innovations as small can topple giants.

Cost: Roughly $200 billion in missed market value.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 9/10

Read More: Lessons from the Rise of Netflix and the Fall of Blockbuster (Cato Institute)

MySpace Loses to Facebook – 2000s

The Setup: MySpace was the dominant social network of the early 2000s.

The Decision: News Corp. acquired MySpace for $580 million and focused on aggressive ad monetization and customization over user experience..

The Blunder: Ignoring Facebook, which provided a cleaner, more trusted platform. buying a company no one at News Corp. really understood.

The Fallout: MySpace’s traffic collapsed. News Corp sold it for just $35 million.

Lessons:

• User experience trumps short-term monetization.

• Early entrants to a new industry don’t always win the race.

• A legacy media company needs to explore different strategies to succeed in new industries.

Cost: More than $500 million and missing out on a trillion-dollar industry.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 9/10

Read More: MySpace – what went wrong: ‘The site was a massive spaghetti-ball mess’ (The Guardian)

Long‑Term Capital Management – 1998

The Setup: Star traders and Nobel laureates made trades that worked … -—until they didn’t.

The Decision: Put extreme leverage on “low‑risk” spreads.

The Blunder: Grossly underestimated risk. Made correlated bets that collapsed together.

The Fallout: Required a rescue plan from the Federal Reserve, which feared this single hedge fund’s blunders could take down the entire global economy. The event led the hedge fund industry to reexamine their models.

What It Cost: $4.6 billion in losses mitigated by a $3.6 billion bailout from private firms that the Fed rallied.

Lessons:

• Diversification without independence between investments is an illusion.

• Risk analysis does not always consider the worst-case scenario.

• Size your positions for surprises, not sunshine.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 9/10

Read More: The Epic Story Of How A 'Genius' Hedge Fund Almost Caused A Global Financial Meltdown (Business Insider via Wayback Machine)

Quaker Oats Snaps Up Snapple – 1993

The Setup: Basking in the success of its Gatorade brand, Quaker made a big bet on another beverage rocket ship.

The Decision: Acquired Snapple for $1.7 billion at the peak of the brand’s market hype.

The Blunder: Overpaid. Botched integration and brand positioning.

The Fallout: Fire‑sale exit for $300 million just 27 months later.

What It Cost: About $1.4 billion in value destruction.

Lessons:

• Pay for current performance, not for potential.

• Protect what makes an acquired brand unique and loved.

• Expected synergies are often illusions.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 7.5/10

Read More: Quaker-Snapple: $1.4 Billion Is Down the Drain (Los Angeles Times)

Salomon Brothers’ Fat-Finger Trade – 1992

The Setup: Salomon Brothers was one of Wall Street’s most powerful trading firms, heavily active in equities and Treasury markets. On a volatile March trading day, markets were already sensitive to large institutional orders.

The Decision: A Salomon clerk entered a sell order intended for $11 million worth of stock.

The Blunder: The order was mistakenly entered as 11 million shares instead of $11 million, flooding the market with an enormous unintended sell order. The so-called “fat-finger” error triggered a sharp late-day drop on the New York Stock Exchange and erased a market rally.

The Fallout: The sudden sell-off rattled traders, exposed weaknesses in trading controls, and led to significant losses for Salomon. It also intensified scrutiny around electronic trading systems and human input errors.

What It Cost: More than $500 million in losses for Salomon Brothers, along with reputational damage and increased regulatory attention.

Lessons:

• Basic input errors can trigger massive market consequences.

• Robust safeguards like trade limits, confirmation checks, and automated kill switches, are essential.

• Human oversight remains a critical vulnerability, even in sophisticated financial systems.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 8.5/10

Read More: Salomon’s botched sell order underscores market vulnerability (United Press Intenational)

Gerald Ratner’s “Crap” – 1991

The Setup: Ratners was a United Kingdom jeweler with popular but low‑priced products.

The Decision: More of an impulse than a decision to joke that products were “crap.”

The Blunder: Trashing the product.

The Fallout: Share price plunge. Leadership change. Multi‑year effort to repair the brand.

What It Cost: About £500 million in market value.

Lessons:

• Respect your customer’s purchase.

• Don’t denigrate the product.

• Humor can bomb. Really bomb.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 7.5/10

Read More: Gerald Ratner's 'crap' comment haunts jewellery chain (The Guardian)

New Coke – 1985

The Setup: Pepsi taste‑test gains spooked Coca‑Cola.

The Decision: Replaced the flagship formula nationwide.

The Blunder: Didn’t realize the taste test research was framed for sips, not full consumption. Misread emotional brand loyalty. No graceful rollback plan.

The Fallout: Outrage and a rapid rebranding of the original formula as “Coca‑Cola Classic.”

What It Cost: Tens of millions in lost revenues. But it’s a big company and the blunder arguably reinforced brand over time. Still, this blunder is so memorable that it remains a popular anecdote to this day for what not to do in business.

Lessons:

• Don’t mess with an icons.

• Research must mirror real‑world use.

• Reversing a bad decision has to be transparent and strategic.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 7/10

Read More: Why Coca-Cola’s ‘New Coke’ Flopped (History.com)

IBM Hands PC Power to Microsoft – 1980s

The Setup: IBM wanted an operating system and software for its new personal computers.

The Decision: Licensed Microsoft’s MS-DOS instead of owning it outright.

The Blunder: IBM let Microsoft keep the rights ot MS-DOS.

The Fallout: Microsoft dominated the software industry. IBM faded from PC dominance.

Lessons:

• Hardware isn’t as valuable as software, which an be licensed to multiple computer makers.

• Don’t use your brand to build a competitor’s company.

• Giving away the core of the platform can be fatal.

Cost: Hundreds of billions in lost opportunity and market dominance.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 9/10

Read More: IBM Signs A Deal With The Devil (thisdayinhistory.com)

Penn-Central Merger – 1968-1970

The Setup: Two declining railroads trying to fend off trucks, cars and airlines.

The Decision: Merged Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads without a credible turnaround plan for the combined entity.

The Blunder: Ignored corporate culture and union frictions. Misjudged capital requirements. Fought against a macro-economic trend.

The Fallout: Bankruptcy in two years. A government restructuring of U.S. rail.

What It Cost: Largest U.S. bankruptcy at the time and a massive loss in shareholder value.

Lessons:

• Strapping two listing ships together doesn’t build a cruise liner.

• Integration requires a clear command structure.

• Fix operations before putting them together.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 8/10

Read More: Penn Central Railroad (West Virginia Encyclopedia)

Decca Rejects The Beatles – 1962

The Setup: Decca Records was a major label auditioning new talent.

The Decision: Rejected The Beatles, saying “guitar groups are on the way out.”

The Blunder: They signed The Tremeloes instead. Anyone heard of Tremeloes lately?

The Fallout: The Beatles became the most successful band in history.

Lessons:

• Dismissing trends too early can backfire spectacularly.

• Don’t be arrogant when making subjective decisions.

• Guitar music has been around since the 16th century and isn’t going away any time soon.

Cost: Lost billions in record sales, tours and cultural dominance.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 8.5/10

Read More: Remember When: Decca Records Turned Down The Beatles (American Songwriter)

Ford Edsel – 1957-1960

The Setup: Ford wanted to dominate the mid-size car market.

The Decision: Launched the Edsel, hyped as the “car of the future” after making significant market research into the rising economic affluence of American car buyers.

The Blunder: The car was overpriced, ugly and released during a recession.

The Fallout: Ford lost $250 million and killed the brand after just 3 years.

Lessons:

• Hype can’t replace a genuine product-market fit.

• Timing matters. This was the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time.

• Market research has limitations.

Cost: $250 million in 1950s dollars or about $2.5 billion in today’s dollars.

Blunder Rating: 🔥 8/10

Read More: What Happened to the Car Industry’s Most Famous Flop? (Time)

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Venerating business people is the second-worst crime that the financial media regularly commits.

Featured entrepreneurs and executives are not saints. They’re not always good at business, either. They just hired a good PR firm. So why worship them with bogus listicles like, “30 Under 30,” “40 Under 40” or “Top Entrepreneurs?”

It’s almost as bad as the worst crime business journalists regularly commit: hyping stocks, like they know the future, often leading exuberant readers to losses. Shamelessly promoting business personalities often leads to the same financial disasters.

It’s commonly called the “30 Under 30 Curse.” It’s so bad that in 2023 Forbes had to create a “Hall of Shame” for the bad calls on its annual lists.

Business Blunders keeps score so that everyday people can stay aware of what they are up against when navigating the financial world. And the scorecard keeps adding players.

Last week, prosecutors announced a sweeping, six-count indictment against Christine Hunsicker alleging a $300 million fraud at the fashion technology companies she founded, CaaStle and P180. For now, she’s out on $1 million bail and has pleaded not guilty.

Inc. magazine once put Hunsicker on its lists of “Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs” and “Top 100 Female Founders.” In 2016, Crain’s New York put her on its annual “40 Under 40” list. And in 2017, she made the National Retail Federation’s “List of People Shaping Retail’s Future.”

Somehow, this so-called “disruptor” never made the list of “Most Likely To Forge An Audit Report,” as recently alleged.

Read More Blunders

Then there’s Charlie Javice who was convicted in March for duping JPMorgan Chase out of $175 million. Javice, who founded a college planning startup called Frank, faces decades in prison when she is slated to be sentenced in August.

But oh the acclaim she racked up on her way to the pokey.

In 2011, Fast Company put her on its list of “Most Creative People,” which in an unfortunate way proved true. In 2019, she made the Crain’s New York Business list of “40 Under 40.” Also in 2019, she made Forbes “30 Under 30’ list. Finally, in 2023, Forbes reconsidered and put Javice in its Hall of Shame.

JPMorgan grossly overpaid Javice for her website and customer base. Too bad there was never a list for “Most Likely To Sell A Bogus Email List To An Unwary Wall Street Bank.”

Forbes claims a 99.9% success rate in its 30 Under 30 lists, which are published for several industry segments and include hundreds of people each year. Too often, the list, and others just like it, seem to set up honorees for failure.

Here’s the Blunder List of highly lauded business personalities who went on to become spectacular flops.

It’s not easy keeping track of these wonders. See anyone missing?

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• Do Kwon, Terraform Labs. Before he was indicted in January 2025 for fraudulently inflating the value of his company’s cryptocurrencies in an alleged $40 billion fraud, Kwon made Forbes’ 2019 30 Under 30 list for finance. At the top of his game, Kwon mocked his social media critics as “idiots” and haughtily told one of them:“I don’t debate the poor on Twitter.” Apparently, being a crypto troll is not disqualifying at Forbes. He has pleaded not guilty.

• Nate Paul, World ClassCapital. Forbes put Paul on its 30 under 30 list in 2016 for founding a $1 billion real estate empire spanning 17 states. In April 2025, the Austin, Texas developer was sentenced to four months of home confinement after facing a dozen bank fraud-related charges. He got off easy, possibly because of his connections to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. During sentencing, even the judge acknowledged the possibility of a presidential pardon. But at least he’s now a convicted felon and a dis-honoree in the Forbes Hall of Shame.

• Joanna Smith-Griffin, AllHere Education. Smith-Griffin spun her company out of Harvard with the noble aim of using artificial intelligence to keep kids engaged in schools. She was charged in November 2024 for lying about her company’s revenues, customer base and cash on hand while she raised about $10 million from investors. When Smith-Griffin made the Forbes “30 Under 30” list in 2021, she offered at least one telling comment: “My goal over the next 12 months is a land grab.”

• Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX. How could Forbes not notice the sudden success of this fuzzy-headed cryptocurrency exchange founder? Bankman-Fried was richer than Scrooge McDuck when he made 30 Under 30 in 2021. But that was before he was exposed for running one of the biggest scams in the brief history of cryptocurrency. He was sentenced in March 2024 to 25 years in prison.

• Caroline Ellison, Alameda Research. Why not include Sam Bankman-Fried’s girlfriend, too? Forbes placed Ellison on its “30 Under 30” list in 2022. Before the year was through, she copped a plea deal for her role as CEO of the trading firm intertwined with FTX. In September 2024, she was sentenced to only two years in prison after assisting with prosecutors in Bankman-Fried’s conviction. In December 2024, she had three months dropped from her prison sentence for “good conduct time.” She’ll be out in time to make the 40 Under 40.

• Matilda Djerf, Djerf Avenue. Forbes called this Swedish fashion entrepreneur the “it girl” as it placed her on its 2023 30 Under 30 list. They could have added an “sh” to “it girl.” In December 2024, her employees publicly accused her of deploying “psychological terror” in the workplace, even to the point of making one worker scrub her toilet. Unlike most other disgraced Forbes honorees, she apologized, and there’s no crime in that.

• James O'Keefe, Project Veritas. Forbes put the conservative media group’s founder on its 2012 30 Under 30 list for “his mission to expose liberal bias in the media.” Forbes needs to be on a mission to expose its own bias in making these ridiculous lists. In February 2023, O’Keefe’s own board removed him, saying it uncovered “financial malfeasance,” with donor funds going towards his “personal luxuries.” No crime charged here, but Forbes had little choice but to move O’Keefe to its Hall of Shame.

• Phadria Prendergast, Women of the City Magazine. Forbes decided to investigate Prendergast only after honoring her on its 2023 30 Under 30 list. Forbes then detailed allegations of a pay-to-play scheme at Prendergast’s magazine. Several customers claimed that she stole around $195,000 from them. She was also linked to Nigerian-British pastor Tobi Adegboyega, whose SPAC Nation church has been labelled a cult. She has denied the allegations, and no charges have been filed, but she is now listed in Forbes’ Hall of Shame.

• Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos. Holmes received more than 11 years in prison in November 2022 for duping high-profile investors out of billions with her fake blood tests. Before that, she may have racked up more accolades than any other fraudster in history. To name a few: In 2014, Forbes ranked her No. 73 in its list of “the world’s most powerful women.” Time Magazine listed her among its 100 most influential people. She became the youngest recipient of the 2015 Horatio Alger Award honoring distinguished Americans. And President Barack Obama named her Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. So many awards. So few prison-cell walls to hang them on.

• Cody Wilson, Defense Distributor. Forbes described Wilson as a “Texan crypto-anarchist … behind the world’s first fully 3D-printed gun,” when it placed him on its 2014 30 Under 30 list. “He sees the gun as a symbolic step toward a private law society, where power rests with people rather than intrusive government.” And then in 2019 Wilson was sentenced to seven years of probation for sex with an underaged girl who he met online. That damn intrusive government will get you whether you’re armed or not. He’s in the Forbes Hall of Shame. Forbes should put itself in the Hall of Shame, too, after this one.

• Steph Korey, Away. The co-founder of this luggage brand made Forbes’ 2018 30 Under 30 list only to be exposed months later as a toxic boss in a 2019 article by The Verge. There’s nothing illegal about being a mean boss, but Forbes moved Korey to its Hall of Shame for her alleged bullying management style. Now she’s got to carry around that baggage.

• Martin Shkreli, Elea Capital, MSMB Capital Management and MSMB Healthcare. Shkreli made the 2012 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Finance. Then he became widely known as the much-hated “pharma bro” after acquiring a license for the anti-parasitic drug Daraprim and raised its price from $13.50 to $750.00 per pill. Too bad this parasite didn’t use the drug on himself. He also committed securities fraud and was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2018.

• Lucas Duplan, Clinkle. Forbes was at least a little prescient when Duplan made its 2014 30 Under 30 list for his digital wallet startup: “Duplan is running one of the most hyped and controversial startups in the nation.” Like that’s a credential? Unfortunately, the tech world moves quickly and Clinkle shut down in 2016. Unlike other fantastic flops in the Forbes Hall of Shame, Duplan was only accused of failure and mismanagement, which is hardly a crime in today’s business world. He did, however, embarrass some high-flying Silicon Valley investors – including Peter Thiel and the venture capital firm of Andreesen Horowitz – after raising $30 million and never delivering a product.

• Fredrick D. Scott, ACI Capital Group. In 2010, Ebony magazine put Scott on its ‘Top 30 Under 30” list as “the youngest African American hedge fund founder in history.” In 2014, he received 63 months in prison for stealing money from his clients and lying to regulators. “Fredrick Douglas Scott claimed to be a part of history,” said U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch. “Rather than help his clients invest their hard earned money, Scott stole their money for his own personal use to buy expensive dinners, clothes, and other goods and services.” How else was he supposed to maintain his image?

• R. Allen Stanford, Stanford Financial Group. Before receiving a 110-year prison sentence in 2012 for running one of the world’s biggest Ponzi schemes, London-based World Finance magazine named this bloviating banker “2008 Man of the Year.” Or so it appeared with $7 billion in stolen loot in his pockets. Stanford’s scheme was so massive, he might have ranked No. 1 on the Blunder List of biggest Ponzi schemes. Too bad Bernie Madoff beat him to the title. Now there’s a guy who managed to stay off these lists.

• Andrew Fastow, Enron. CFO Magazine named Fastow “CFO of the Year” in 1999, recognizing his innovative, yet ultimately fraudulent, use of off-balance-sheet vehicles. Fastow went on to serve five years in prison. “When Andrew S. Fastow, the 37-year-old CFO of Enron Corp., boasts that “our story is one of a kind,” he’s not kidding,” the magazine said. Yeah, and it wasn’t funny.

Tour The Business Blunders Hall Of Shame

(Full discloser: I hope this serves as penance for some of the suck-up stories I’ve I had to write and edit over the years. Business journalists need to be watchdogs, not lapdogs.)

What are the biggest business mistakes?

What are the biggest mistakes that companies make? They tend to follow the same patterns: financial fraud, reckless growth, executive hubris, toxic corporate cultures and market delusions.

Most corporate disasters involve:

• Financial fraud and accounting manipulation

• Executive misconduct and culture failures

• Growth-at-any-cost strategies

• Market deception and investor fraud

Each of these has its own playbook.

The biggest business mistakes aren’t random. They repeat across industries, decades, and executives who should know better.

The examples explored in Business Blunders offers hard lessons for anyone running a business.

Real cases, not theory

Most advice about common mistakes in business is safe, generic, and stating the obvious. Don’t overspend. Hire carefully. Have a plan.

That’s not how real blunders happen.

The biggest mistakes in business come under intense pressures. They’re decisions that destroy companies, careers, and billions of dollars in value. And they happen over and over again, as if one ever learns from history.

Executives too often ignore risk, chase growth at any cost, cut ethical corners, or convince themselves the rules don’t apply.

This archive tracks those decisions as they actually happened – frauds, collapses, executive misconduct, and spectacular misjudgments that turned success into failure.

Common mistakes in business:

• Growth at any cost: Sonder and WeWork burned through billions chasing scale without first building a viable model.

• Fake it, ‘til you make it: Theranos couldn’t bring its promised product through the development cycle. It ended up selling a breakthrough that didn’t exist.

• Ignoring obvious risk: FTX collapsed after reckless misappropriation of customer funds.

• Financial engineering over reality: Enron hid losses with phony accounting until the fictional structure it engineered over many years finally imploded.

• Executive misconduct and culture rot: Repeated scandals across companies that should have known better.

These aren’t theoretical “lessons.” They’re real-world failures with names, numbers, and consequences.

Lessons From The Business Blunders Archive

Explore a curated set of lists tracking the biggest business blunders – past and present. Use them as a reference, a warning, or a reminder that bad decisions tend to follow familiar patterns.

Financial Fraud & The White-Collar Playbook

When the numbers stop reflecting reality, companies turn to the same playbook: Accounting tricks, investor deception, and outright fraud.

The White-Collar Playbook – The most common types of financial fraud and the companies that didn’t get away with them.

Corporate Fraud Cases – How crooked is Big Business? Here’s a look at criminally charged corporations.

Ponzi Scheme Examples – How swindlers steal billions when investors stop asking questions.

Executive & Cultural Failures

Sometimes the problem isn’t the strategy. It’s the people running it.

Bad CEO Decisions – Top executives who exposed how self-absorbed, out-of-touch and wrong they can be.

Executive Misconduct Cases – Top CEOs who kissed away their jobs.

The ‘30 Under 30’ Curse – When hype outruns judgment

The Biggest Blunders

The biggest business mistakes don’t happen in isolation. They cluster in years when everything goes wrong at once.

The Biggest Business Blunders Of All Time – The costly lessons companies still haven’t learned.

Biggest Business Blunders Of 2025 – It was a year of bankruptcies, scandals, and spectacular misjudgments.

Biggest Business Blunders Of 2024 –It was a year of a year of errant forecasters, typical frauds, and corporate chaos.

The History Of Blunders

The same patterns repeat. New names, same outcomes.

Business Blunders Hall Of Shame – The executives who turned success into indictment.

This Day In Blunders – A daily record of business failures, frauds and bad decisions.

The Business Blunders Archive – Weekly pweekly breakdowns of the blunders still shaping markets today.

Boston swindler Charles Ponzi defined a classic grift in the 1920s, but the millions he stole are a pittance beside the billions that scammers rip off today using the same old trick.

Ponzi crafted a story about profiting from postal coupons sold abroad. But he never really did this.

Instead, he used the funds of new investors to pay off old investors while he pinched the pot. He bought himself all the trappings of a fabulously successful business magnate, from a mansion and a limo to a controlling interest in the Hanover Trust Co.

Don't Miss These Blunders

Ponzi schemes are childishly simple, greedy and stupid – and they almost always run the same course that made Ponzi a household name. Charismatic perps lure investors with a story, never truly invest in that story, then spend the money any way they want until … kaboom.

Investors can easily steer clear of these scams by asking a few basic questions: Is the money held by a fiduciary? Are the financial statements audited by a reputable auditor? And can anyone explain how this works because it sounds too good to be true.

Too often, though, one’s insatiable avarice gets in the way. And more than 100 years later, people are still losing their life savings to Ponzi schemes – even Harvard Business School students who should know better.

Learn from history. Here’s a ranking of the 15 biggest Ponzi schemers by the amounts stolen. And these are some of the most famous Ponzi scheme examples:

15. Lou Pearlman – $300 million

Lou Pearlman, who famously launched the Backstreet Boys and 'NSync boy bands, used his entertainment empire as a front to defraud investors of more than $300 million.

He sold unregistered securities through his company, Trans Continental International, falsely claiming to have investments in aviation and other ventures. He plied investors with fake financial documents showing fake profits while he pursued a lavish lifestyle, which included luxury homes and private jets.

In 2008, Pearlman was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He died in federal custody in 2016.

His story has been the subject of several documentaries, including Netflix's “Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam.” Like the hit Backstreet Boys song goes: “Tell me why; Ain’t nothin’ but a heartache. Tell me why; Ain’t nothing but a mistake.”

14. William Stenger – $350 million

William Stenger, former president of Jay Peak Resort in Vermont, devised a $350 million Ponzi scheme by duping immigrants through the nation’s EB-5 visa program.

The program is a bit of a scam in itself, allowing wealthy foreigners to essentially buy their way into the U.S. by investing at least $500,000 in job-creating projects. Stenger took EB-5 money, but his scheme didn’t create anything but a fast buck for himself and his co-conspirators.

He and his business partner, Ariel Quiros, raised about $350 million from foreign investors, promising to use the funds for development projects at their Jay Peak and Burke Mountain resorts. They also proposed something called the AnC Bio Vermont biotechnology plant, which never came to be because they misappropriated the money.

The federal government seized Jay Peak and Burke Mountain resorts in 2016 and later sold the properties to recover funds for the defrauded investors.

In 2022, Stenger was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison at age 73. Quiros, was sentenced to five years in prison at age 65. And William Kelley, an advisor to Quiros, received 18 months in prison at age 73.

When all else fails, you can always use the prison system as a retirement plan.

Like President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said: “If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking ... is freedom.”

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13. Gerald Payne – $500 million

Gerald Payne was the leader of Tampa, Fla.-based Greater Ministries International, and he fleeced more than 18,000 Christian investors in the name of the Lord.

Between 1993 and 1999, he amassed nearly $500 million by promising to double his investors’ money in 17 months through divinely inspired investments.

Payne and his associates claimed they could do this through investments in gold and diamond mines in Africa and the Caribbean. But the money went to fund their own heavenly lifestyles.

Payne was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison. His wife, Betty Payne, received a sentence of nearly 13 years. Other leaders of his ministry also received significant prison terms, ranging from 12 to 27 years.

They loved citing scriptures to convince followers that their financial contributions were acts of faith, particularly Luke 6:38:

^“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Somehow, the creator of the entire universe is always short on cash.

12. Reed Slatkin – $600 million

Reed Slatkin was the co-founder of EarthLink, an early Internet service provider, and an ordained minister in the Church of Scientology. He used his position in the church to defraud about 800 investors out of nearly $600 million between 1986 and 2001.

Operating from Santa Barbara, Calif., Slatkin ran an unlicensed investment club. One of his victims was actor Giovanni Ribisi, who starred in the 2000 film “Boiler Room” about penny-stock fraud.

He sent his clients with bogus account statements showing consistent, above-market returns, but what he was really doing was stuffing his pockets, snapping up real estate, private jets, automobiles, and artwork.

He was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2003, but he was released in 2013. He died of a heart attack in 2015 at age 66.

“If you want to get rich, you start a religion,” Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard once said.

And when you’re a minister, it’s a handy way to find gullible victims.

11. Patrick R. Bennett – $600 million

Patrick R. Bennett was the chief financial officer of Bennett Funding Group, a leasing company based in Syracuse, N.Y. From 1990 to 1996, he fleeced more than 12,000 investors out of more than $600 million.

He inherited his company from his parents. It leased office equipment, including photocopiers and fax machines, to government entities. It then sold interests in these leases to investors.

Unfortunately, many of these leases were either fictitious or they were sold multiple times to different investors.

Nothing like having your own fleet of copiers. And being in the business for so long, Bennett must have seen this 1987 ad campaign: “Xerox brings out the genius in you.”

Bennett blew his ill-gotten gains on gambling properties, including a $40 million gambling barge in Biloxi, Miss.; a majority stake in Vernon Downs Racetrack; Harold's Club casino in Reno, Nev., and a 238-foot gambling showboat called, “The Speculator.”

Office machines may have seemed too boring for the nepo baby, but he soon found himself facing some real boredom.

In 2000, he was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison, which was later reduced to 22 years.

10. Thomas Nicholas Salzano – $658 million

Thomas Nicholas Salzano, head of National Realty Investment Advisors, ran a $658 million fraud between 2018 and 2022 that leveraged ads on Fox News and an endorsement from Bill O’Reilly.

He spent his ill-gotten gains on “erectile dysfunction medications, expensive dinners, extravagant birthday parties,” and hefty payments to his wife, ex-wife and girlfriend, according to a federal indictment.

He received a 12-year prison sentence in 2024. And get this: It was his second Ponzi scheme.

In 2001, Salzano and his brother co-founded NorVergence, which sold a magic box they claimed would slash telephone and Internet bills. Investors, who lost more than $300 million, filed lawsuits calling the company a Ponzi scheme. Salzano got three years probation and struck a $50 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission – which was suspended because he didn’t have the money.

But you know what they say, if at first you don’t succeed … Or maybe the third time’s a charm?

9. Marc Dreier – $740 million

Marc Dreier, once a prominent New York attorney, sold fictitious promissory notes to hedge funds and private investors, falsely representing them as legitimate investments.

Between 2002 and 2008, he fabricated financial statements and audit reports, and even impersonated company executives to amass $740 million in ill-gotten gains.

Dreier used the stolen funds to acquire multiple luxury properties, including a $10.4 million Manhattan apartment and a beachfront mansion in the Hamptons. He also purchased a 121-foot yacht, fine art collections featuring works by Picasso and Warhol, and luxury vehicles.

In July 2009, Dreier was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. His law firm, Dreier LLP, filed for bankruptcy, and Dreier was disbarred from practicing law.

President Joe Biden commuted Dreier’s sentence in 2024. Hey, if you’re going to steal, steal enough to preserve your influence in Washington D.C.

8. Paul Burks – $900 million

Paul Burks, founder of Lexington, N.C.-based ZeekRewards, duped more than 900,000 investors worldwide out of $900 million from January 2010 to August 2012.

Burks operated Rex Venture Group, which owned Zeekler, an auction site, and its affinity program, ZeekRewards. Investors were enticed with promises of up to 125% returns that never happened.

By August 2012, Burks falsely claimed that the investments had grown to nearly $3 billion, despite having only $340 million in assets. He personally diverted about $10.1 million as he paid off old investors with new money.

In February 2017, Burks was sentenced to nearly 15 years in federal prison. Co-conspirators Dawn Wright Olivares and Daniel C. Olivares also received prison sentences.

Like a lot of Ponzi perps, Burks was a victim of his own hype. U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn Jr. put it this way at sentencing: “Anyone could have seen what was going to occur outside of himself and his cheerleaders.”

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7. Joel Steinger – $1.25 billion

Joel Steinger defrauded about 30,000 investors out of $1.25 billion through his Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company, Mutual Benefits Corp. between 1994 and 2004.

The company sold “viatical settlements,” or investments in the life insurance policies of terminally ill people.

Mutual Benefits purchased these policies at a discount. Then it purportedly sold fractionalized interests in them to investors, promising high returns upon policyholders’ deaths.

Steinger was already a convicted felon when he started this morbid Ponzi scheme, but he hid behind a figurehead company president to conceal his criminal history.

He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2014. MBC President Peter Lombardi also received 20 years in prison.

Studies show prison time can reduce one’s life expectancy. Anyone want to buy an interest in their life insurance policies?

6. Robert H. Shapiro – $1.3 billion

Robert H. Shapiro, former CEO of the Woodbridge Group of Companies, defrauded more than 8,400 investors out of $1.3 billion between 2012 and 2017. Most of his victims were seniors who had invested their retirement savings.

His companies employed about 130 people and operated like a boiler room, deploying high-pressure sales tactics, deception and manipulation.

The scheme involved selling unregistered promissory notes. The money raised was supposed to be used for loans to commercial property owners. Instead, new money went to old investors and the rest went to luxury homes, private plane charters, and artwork by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alberto Giacometti.

Shapiro, of Sherman Oaks, Calif., was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for a scheme as old as time.

Like one of his favorite artists, Picasso, once said: “We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years.”

5. Scott Rothstein – $1.4 billion

Scott Rothstein was a prominent South Florida attorney who conned more than 1,000 investors out of $1.4 billion between 2005 and 2009.

He convinced his investors to buy into bogus legal settlements, promising returns as high as 25% over a short period. In reality, he was using new investor funds to pay off earlier investors, while he spent with abandon on a phony Floridian lifestyle.

Rothstein blew his stolen money on a multimillion dollar mansion, extravagant parties and a $10 million watch collection.

He also maintained an exotic car collection that included a 2008 Bugatti Veyron, a white 2010 Lamborghini Murcielago SV, a yellow Mclaren SLR, a matching pair of Ferrari 430 spiders, a Rolls Royce Phantom and a Bentley Continental GT. He spent heavily on political donations and bribes, to burnish his false image of success and influence.

In 2010, Rothstein received a 50-year prison sentence. Too bad, authorities auctioned off his watch collection. He could have used at least one of them to mark the time.

4. David Gentile – $1.6 billion

David Gentile, founder and CEO of GPB Capital Holdings, defrauded more than 10,000 investors out of $1.8 billion between 2013 and 2018.

His firm marketed private equity funds to individual investors, promising high returns from investments in auto dealerships and other businesses. But it wasn’t profitable as advertised.

The firm allegedly used new investor capital to pay returns to earlier investors to keep the game going. Gentile’s lavish spending including a private jet and a $355,000 Ferrari FF.

Gentile received a seven-year prison sentence in May 2025. Another defendant, Jeffry Schneider, the former CEO of Ascendant Capital, received six years.

Somehow, Gentile made the all-too-common mistake of thinking investors money was his money, according to testimony during the trial from another defendant in the case, auto dealer Jeffrey Lash.

Gentile “always told me that essentially the investors’ money was his money and he could do with it really anything that he wanted to with it,” Lash said

President Donald Trump commuted his sentence in November 2025.

3. Tom Petters – $3.65 billion

Minnesota tycoon Tom Petters once owned Polaroid and Sun Country Airlines and went on to swindle everyone from hedge funds to missionaries and pastors.

He claimed his namesake firm, Petters Co., was buying retail merchandise at a discount and selling these goods to stores at a profit.

Instead, he was using the money to finance other businesses as well as his lavish lifestyle … until, well, you might say he finally Pettered out.

In 2010, he was sentenced to 50 years in prison. His scam is reportedly the biggest in Minnesota history.

2. Robert Allen Stanford – $7 billion

Robert Allen Stanford was arrested in 2009 for allegedly defrauding more than 30,000 investors in 113 countries. He stole more than $7 billion and he received a 110-year prison sentence following his 2012 conviction.

Stanford convinced his mostly foreign investors that their money was safely deposited in CDs while he spent it with abandon, destroying lives wherever he went.

Stanford used his ill-gotten gains to create an international cricket league and to name sporting venues named after himself. He also used his loot to practically take over the Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, where he was officially knighted in 2006.

Sir Stanford also owned two newspapers in Antigua. And he was named “2008 Man of the Year” by London-based World Finance magazine.

Nobody in the world of finance should have made man of the year in 2008 when the entire global economy buckled under the weight of debt and fraud.

1. Bernie Madoff – $65 Billion

Bernie Madoff ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding thousands of investors out of billions of dollars, until it all came crashing down with the 2008 financial crisis. Regulators never caught him. He was only charged after he turned himself in.

His victims were mostly fellow Jews and Jewish organizations, including the Elie Wiesel Foundation and Steven Spielberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation.

His fraud was initially estimated at $65 billion. That figure was wildly inflated with made-up investment gains that Madoff investors believed they were getting, but he still holds the record for running the largest Ponzi scheme ever uncovered.

The undisputed king of all Ponzis pled guilty in March 2009 to 11 felonies. He received 150 years. His brother Peter received 12 years. His son, Mark, hanged himself in 2010. His son Andrew died of lymphoma in 2014. Bernie died in prison in 2021 at age 82 after destroying just about everyone in his life.

Among Madoff’s victims:

• René-Thierry de La Villehuchet, a French aristocrat and investment manager who lost an estimated $1.4 billion, committed suicide a few days after the Ponzi scheme imploded.

• Charles Murphy, a hedge fund manager with ties to Madoff, jumped to his death from a New York hotel in 2017.

• William Foxton, a former British Army major, died by suicide in 2009 due to the shame of going bankrupt after losing his family's savings.

This is what Ponzi schemers do. And when their victims die of despair, their crimes are on par with murder.

Read More:

• Charles Ponzi – Boston Swindler (Business Blunders Hall Of Shame)

• Bernard Madoff – Madoff Securities (Business Blunders Hall Of Shame)

• The Substack Ponzi (Business Blunders)

• Pardon My Ponzi (Business Blunders)

• Unshackling Ponzi Perps (Business Blunders)

• Instant Ponzi – Just Add Water (Business Blunders)

• The Forgotten Ponzi (Business Blunders)

Related Blunders:

• Criminal corporations

• CEO hubris

• Executive misconduct

• Hall of Shame

• Blunder history

Corporations are protected by the law, but they are not always subject to the law.

Corporate fraud cases are often an exception to the rule. Prosecutors are reluctant to file charges against corporations, and when they do, companies frequently negotiate deferred prosecution agreements. More often, companies face civil complaints that they can settle quietly.

Big companies have all the rights of an individual, but when it comes to enforcement they don’t have all of the responsibilities. “For Big Companies, Felony Convictions Are a Mere Footnote,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

How crooked are corporations? Here’s a data base from the Justice Department. And here’s the Blunder List of some the world’ biggest alleged corporate crooks:

Boeing – 2025

The aerospace giant had agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to defraud the United States. It admitted to misleading regulators during the certification of the 737 MAX, following two crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. But in May 2025, the U.S. Justice Department dropped the criminal charge. Instead, Boeing received a slap-on-the-wing, non-prosecution agreement that included about $1.1 billion in penalties, victim compensation, and compliance spending. The dropped guilty plea came after prosecutors concluded Boeing had violated the terms of a deferred prosecution agreement it struck in January 2021.

Read More:

• Felons Fly Free (Business Blunders)

• Con Air (Business Blunders)

• Boeing’s Lost Spirit (Business Blunders)

• Don’t Listen to Sam (Business Blunders)

Cadence Design Systems – 2025

Cadence Design Systems agreed to plead guilty and pay more than $140 million to resolve criminal charges for exporting technology to a nation that we fear could one day nuke us. The San Jose, Calif.-based company was accused of supplying China’s National University of Defense Technology. The school, believed to support nuclear explosive simulations, has been on the Commerce Department’s restricted trade list since 2015. A few million dollars settles anything. None dare call it “treason.”

Credit Suisse – 2025

The Swiss bank, now part of UBS, pleaded guilty to hiding more than $4 billion from the IRS in at least 475 offshore accounts. It agreed to pay more than $510 million in penalties, restitution and fines. What else is a Swiss bank good for besides hiding the assets of the rich while the little people pay taxes?

Tour The Business Blunders Hall Of Shame

McKinsey & Co. – 2024

The consulting giant McKinsey & Co. struck a deferred prosecution deal and agreed to pay $650 million for its role in the opioid crisis with Purdue Pharma. Apparently its white papers are as deadly as its client’s pills.

Read more: “Sorry About That Opioid Thing.”

Raytheon – 2024

A subsidiary of the Virginia-based defense contractor entered a deferred prosecution agreement and agreed to pay over $950 million following a major government contracting scheme. There were also violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Nothing like swindling the nation you’re hired to protect, but what are we going to do? The world needs more ammo.

TD Bank – 2024

The nation’s 10th-largest bank pleaded guilty and agreed to pay over $1.8 billion for money laundering and violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. Former U.S. Attorney Merrick Garland said it best: “By making its services convenient for criminals, TD Bank became one.”

Family Dollar Store – 2024

The chain pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for holding food, drugs, medical devices and cosmetics in its rodent-infested warehouse in West Memphis, Ark. The company agreed to pay a fine of nearly $42 million – the largest monetary criminal penalty in a food safety case, and quite a sum for a dollar store.

Read more: “Losing $8 Billion In A Dollar Store.”

Teva Pharmaceuticals – 2024

The nation’s largest drug manufacturer agreed to pay $450 million following an investigation into a kickback scheme. That settlement came on top of a previous deferred prosecution agreement for price fixing. Sick of soaring pharmaceutical prices? They’ve got a pill for that.

eBay – 2024

The e-commerce giant agreed to pay a $3 million criminal penalty for cyberstalking and obstructing the investigation that followed. The company put a Massachusetts couple “through hell” in August 2019 with a harassment and intimidation campaign following their critical comments about the online seller. So much for eBay’s mission statement: “eBay was founded in 1995 on the simple premise that people are basically good.” They’re not always.

Don't Miss These Blunders

Binance Holdings – 2023

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $4 billion for money laundering. Two of its top executives were successfully prosecuted as well. “Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform,” said former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Former U.S. Attorney Merrick Garland offered a moral for our times: “Using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor, it makes you a criminal.”

The Trump Organization – 2022

President Donald Trump’s namesake company was convicted for a scheme to defraud, conspiracy, tax fraud and falsifying business records. Separately, the company’s chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg went to prison for perjury. “This verdict sends a clear message that no one, and no organization, is above our laws,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James. So far, Trump’s reelection has proven otherwise.

PG&E – 2020

Pacific Gas & Electric has a history of criminal negligence dating back to the 1990s, sparking fires that have killed hundreds of people and scorched thousands of acres, homes and businesses. Among its many convictions, the utility pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and one felony count of unlawfully starting a fire for the 2018 blaze that destroyed the Northern, Calif. town of Paradise. The company’s follies led to the largest utility bankruptcy in history. But it emerged from bankruptcy in 2020. That was after paying most of the money it owed under a $13.5 billion settlement for the Camp Fire in 2018; the Tubbs Fire in 2017; the Butte Fire in 2015; and the Ghost Ship Fire in Oakland in 2016. Some companies crash and burn. PG&E burned and crashed.

Wells Fargo – 2020

The nation’s third-largest bank struck a deferred prosecution agreement and agreed to pay $3 billion for pressuring employees to open accounts and credit cards for customers without their consent or knowledge. Just try applying for a credit card in someone else’s name and see what happens to you. Yet Wells Fargo has a rap sheet that could make the world’s biggest crime families bleed with jealousy.

JPMorgan Chase – 2020

The nation’s largest bank also has a rap sheet too long to roll out here. Among its sanctions was an agreement to pay $920 million for unlawful trading in the precious metals and Treasury markets. And in 2014, it negotiated a deferred prosecution agreement for its banking relationship with Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, coughing up $1.7 billion to Madoff victims. Who wants to bank where executives can’t spot a Ponzi on their own books? Yet today JPMorgan has more than $3.6 trillion in assets.

Purdue Pharma – 2020

A privately held drugmaker that traced its roots to 1892 profited from “a national tragedy of addiction and death.” It settled criminal charges by agreeing to dissolve and pay $8 billion for its role in the opioid crisis. Separately, the Sackler family that ran this dope-pushing enterprise agreed to pay $225 million in damages to resolve its civil liability. So much for Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No.” … Just say dough.

Goldman Sachs – 2020

The nation’s second-largest investment bank negotiated a deferred prosecution deal, and agreed to pay $2.9 billion for a bribery scheme. Goldman Sachs was charged after allegedly paying more than $1 billion in bribes to Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials to obtain billions worth of bond offerings. The firm has also suffered a string of controversies over the years, including a $550 million civil settlement for its role in the 2008 financial crisis. “This settlement is a stark lesson to Wall Street firms,” said the Security and Exchange Commission’s Robert Khuzami. … Yet the band plays on.

HSBC – 2018

London-based banking giant HSBC Holdings copped a deferred prosecution agreement and agreed to pay more than $100 million in criminal penalties, disgorgement and restitution for front running. HSBC admitted it had defrauded two large banking clients by trading ahead of their moves in foreign exchange markets. Yet that was nothing compared to its deferred prosecution deal in 2012 when it paid more than $1.25 billion for money laundering. Rolling Stone said that case proved the drug war is a joke.

Takata – 2017

One of the world’s largest automotive safety equipment suppliers agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud and pay $1 billion in criminal penalties after admitting it falsified airbag safety test data and misled automakers about defective inflators. The disaster led to about 30 deaths and more than 450 injuries worldwide, with the vast majority of casualties occurring in the United States. It became the largest automotive recall in U.S. history, affecting 67 million airbags installed by 19 major automakers. Prosecutors also charged three senior executives — Hideo Nakajima, Hiroshi Shimizu, and Tsuyao Hasegawa — alleging they conspired to doctor test results and conceal the defects. But they were never extradited from Japan. The company itself couldn’t survive the fallout. Takata filed for Chapter 11 in 2017.

Volkswagen – 2017

The German automaker sold the world on an oxymoronic concept to ease climate change called “clean diesel.” But VW had installed software in its cars that could cheat on emissions tests. It paid a $2.8 billion criminal penalty for a long-running scheme to sell 590,000 of these smoke-belching vehicles in the U.S. “Dieselgate,” as it came to be known, sent two top executives to prison, and convicted two others of felonies, but CEO Martin Winterkorn’s trial was indefinitely postponed due to his failing health. In total, the company has paid more than $33 billion in fines and compensation. You could say the scandal has redefined the term, “Volkswagen Bug.”

Citicorp, Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, The Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS – 2015

Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, and The Royal Bank of Scotland pleaded guilty and paid criminal fines totaling more than $2.5 billion for manipulating U.S. dollars and euros in foreign exchange markets. Additionally, UBS pleaded guilty to manipulating benchmark interest rates, including LIBOR, or the London Interbank Offered Rate. No biggie. LIBOR is just the rate that determines the price of everything from loans to credit cards. Calling them banksters isn’t cynical. The world’s biggest banks have proven that global markets really are rigged.

Archer Daniels Midland – 2013

The “Supermarket to the World” agreed to pay more than $54 million to resolve U.S. criminal and civil charges that it paid bribes to Ukrainian officials for tax benefits. Bribes amounted to 18% to 20% of the refunds. While it lasted, it was a deal as sweet as ADM’s high-fructose corn syrup.

BP – 2012

The British oil giant pleaded guilty to felony manslaughter, environmental crimes and obstruction of Congress following its 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster – and it agreed to pay a record $4 billion in penalties. The infamous drilling platform explosion killed 11 people and caused the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. CEO Tony Hayward lost his job after trying to minimize the damage. He said that compared to all the oil BP was spilling into the sea, “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean.”

ING – 2012

The Amsterdam-based bank agreed to forfeit $619 million in a deferred prosecution agreement after admitting to illegally moving billions of dollars for sanctioned Cuban and Iranian entities and drug traffickers. These offenses carried on from the mid-1990s through 2006, prosecutors alleged. The banking giant got away with it by ly-ING.

Kellogg Brown & Root – 2011

The Houston-based global engineering, construction and services company agreed to pay $402 million to settle criminal charges stemming from a bribery scheme in Nigeria. KBR and its then-parent Halliburton also agreed to a $177 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tyson Foods – 2011

The Arkansas-based food giant paid a $4 million criminal penalty for bribing Mexican meat processing inspectors. You don’t want to see how the sausage is made – not even Jimmy Dean sausage.

Samsung – 2011

The Korean electronics giant has been busted twice for price fixing. Remember cathode-ray tubes? In 2011, Samsung agreed to plead guilty and pay a $32 million criminal fine for rigging the market for those clunky wonders between 1997 and 2006. That came on top of its 2005 guilty plea for price-fixing in the international market for dynamic random access memory chips, where it paid a $300 million fine. Victims of this gouging included Dell, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, IBM and Gateway Inc. and consumers who bought their computers.

BAE Systems – 2010

The London-based defense contractor pleaded guilty and paid a $400 million fine for lying to the U.S. government and obstructing investigations into its compliance program under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. BAE was making payments to shell companies and third-party intermediaries with a “high probability that part of the payments would be used to ensure that BAES was favored in foreign government decisions.” Like faulty artillery, its bribery plan backfired.

Pfizer – 2009

The U.S. pharmaceutical giant agreed to pay $2.3 billion, which was then the largest health-care-fraud settlement, to resolve criminal and civil liability for illegally promoting off-label uses of its drugs. At issue were anti-inflammatory drug, Bextra, anti-psychotic drug Geodon, antibiotic drug Zyvox, and anti-epileptic drug Lyrica. Pfizer was also accused of paying kickbacks to get health care providers to prescribe its drugs. Sometimes doctors’ advice is only as good as the slick pharma rep who takes them golfing.

UBS – 2009

The Swiss banking giant reached a deferred prosecution agreement and paid $780 million for helping ultra-wealthy Americans hide assets from the IRS. As part of the deal, UBS agreed to rat out its tax-cheating customers. Years later, UBS went on to acquire Credit Suisse, which has pleaded guilty for the same thing. It never ends. Some call it Unmitigated BS.

British Airways and Korean Airlines – 2007

These two international passenger and cargo carriers pleaded guilty to price fixing and each agreed to pay $300 million criminal fines after running an illegal cartel. Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa cut deals for leniency in exchange for their cooperation. It was a time when collusion didn’t fly.

Arthur Andersen – 2002

As the auditor at Enron, this former accounting and consulting giant faced a grand jury indictment for obstruction of justice. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the conviction in 2005 on the basis of trial error. But by then, the firm had already collapsed. Arthur Andersen’s faulty audits of Waste Management, Sunbeam Products, the Baptist Foundation of Arizona and WorldCom also came to light. By shredding documents and destroying data during the Enron probe, the firm proved it didn’t just cook the books, it could eat them, too.

Columbia/HCA – 2000

One of the nation’s largest health care providers pleaded guilty in what was then the biggest Medicare billing fraud in U.S. history. Columbia/HCA ultimately paid about $1.7 billion in penalties and restitution. CEO Rick Scott left the company in 1997 as the scandal erupted, walking away scot-free with a $10 million severance package. He went on to become Florida’s governor and a U.S. Senator. Your tax dollars at work.

Read More: The Wizard Of Oz Goes to Florida (Business Blunders)

Sears, Roebuck and Co. – 1999

Say it ain’t so. This historic icon of American retailing is a crook, too? Sears paid a $60 million criminal fine – the largest in history at the time – for illegally pursuing credit card debtors whose debts were discharged in bankruptcy. It also paid more than $180 million in restitution to about 188,000 debtors and $40 million in civil fines to 50 state attorneys general. Stick that in your catalogue.

Related Blunders:

• CEO hubris

• Executive misconduct

• Ponzi schemes

• Hall of Shame

• Blunder history

They may have experience, education and extensive media training, but they can still be prone to saying really stupid things.

They have thousands of constituents, including board members, investors, employees and customers, so they need to be careful.

Some basic rules they should follow:

• Don’t speak crassly

• Don’t insult the customers

• Don’t blame others for what are obviously your problems

• Don’t pretend to know the future, because clearly you don’t

Here are the dumbest things business leaders have ever said

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman – 2025

“That’s like one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. They're probably the least expensive employees you have.” – Explaining why artificial intelligence won’t replace entry level workers even as Amazon was laying off thousands of employees.

X owner Elon Musk – 2024

“Don't advertise. … If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. … Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.” – Running off advertisers after purchasing Twitter, now X.

Musk, of course, has said so many stupid things, they’re impossible to rank.

Read More Blunders

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush – 2023

“You know, at some point, safety just is pure waste. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything.''– Shortly before dying in an imploded submarine near the Titanic.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos – 2021

“I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all this. Thank you from the bottom of my heart very much.” – Infuriating critics and underpaid employees following his trip to space.

Fisher Investments CEO Ken Fisher – 2019

“Money, sex, those are the two most private things for most people. … It’s like … going up to a woman in a bar and saying, hey I want to talk about what’s in your pants.” – Describing how to approach potential clients, prompting hundreds of millions in withdrawals from his firm.

Papa John’s founder and CEO John Schnatter – 2018

“Colonel Sanders called blacks (N-Words) and Sanders never faced public backlash.” –Spilling the racial slur from his mouth like pizza sauce in a media training call of all places. Papa John’s stock cratered once these words hit the press. One word proved way too much reputational risk with Schnatter as the public face of the brand. He was forced to resign.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon – 2017

“There is no government that’s going to put up with it for long … There will be no currency that gets around government controls.” – Criticizing bitcoin and calling it a fraud.

BP CEO Tony Hayward – 2016

“The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” – Minimizing the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster.

Lululemon CEO Dennis “Chip” Wilson – 2013

“Quite frankly, some women's bodies just actually don't work … It's more really about the rubbing through the thighs, how much pressure is there over a period of time, how much they use it.” – Blaming overweight females for problems with his product.

Hancock Prospecting chairwoman Gina Rinehart – 2012

“Africans want to work and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 a day. Such statistics make me worry for this country's future.” – Expressing concerns for Australia’s economic competitiveness.

Don't Miss These Blunders

Acer CEO Stan Shih – 2012

“Apple is like a mutant virus, escaping from the traditional structure of the PC industry, but the industry will still eventually build up immunity, thus further blocking this trend, and we believe the size of the non-Apple camp will exceed Apple's, because this is how the industry normally evolves.” – Taking a cheap shot at a competitor in 2010.

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes – 2010

“Is the Albanian army going to take over the world? I don’t think so.” – Comparing Netflix to an inconsequential military force.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein – 2009

Just a banker “doing God’s work. – Defending the investment bank’s reputation and dodging responsibility for the 2008 financial crisis.

Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld – 2008

“When I find a short-seller, I want to tear his heart out and eat it before his eyes while he is still alive.” – Blaming traders shortly before his firm’s collapse under the weight of its risky debt portfolio.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer – 2007

“There’s no chance the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” – Grossly underestimating a rival.

Research In Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie – 2007

“It’s kind of one more entrant into an already very busy space with lots of choice for consumers… But in terms of a sort of a sea-change for BlackBerry, I would think that’s overstating it.” - Responding to the launch of Apple’s iPhone.

Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries – 2006

“Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive, all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong, and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.” – Sparking a predicable consumer backlash.

Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe – 2005

“The one opinion, which I think is extreme, is represented by the NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right. That means that as a human being you should have a right to water. That’s an extreme solution.” - Advocating for responsible water management, but widely misunderstood as saying water is not a human right.

Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling – 2001

“Well, uh … Thank you very much. We appreciate it … asshole.” – Responding to a hedge fund manager’s question that presaged the energy giant’s collapse.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey – 2000

“I like Mackey’s haircut. I think he looks cute!” – Pretending to be someone else while hyping his company on a Yahoo message board.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates – 1998

“What I can't figure out is why he (Steve Jobs) is even trying (to be the CEO of Apple)? He knows he can't win.” – Trash-talking Apple founder Steve Jobs.

Denver Post Editor Dennis Britton – 1990s

“The Internet is the CB radio of the 1990s.” - Ignoring technology with the rest of the newspaper industry.

Philip Morris CEO James Morgan – 1997

“If they are behaviorally addictive or habit forming, they are much more like caffeine, or in my case, gummy bears.” – Defending Big Tobacco.

Ratner Group CEO Gerald Ratner – 1991

“People say: How can you sell this for such a low price?’ I say: ‘Because it's total crap.’” – Sinking his jewelry empire.

Hotel and real estate magnate Leona Helmsley – 1989

“We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.’” – Discussing her financial secrets before she was convicted on tax evasion charges.

20th Century Fox co-founder Daryl Zanuck – 1946

“Television won’t be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” – Blinding himself to change.

IBM President Thomas Watson – 1943

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers,” – Making one of the worst predictions in the history of computer technology.

Michigan Savings President George Peck – 1903

“The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad.” – Missing the boat and a great investment.

Western Union Telegraph Co. – 1870s

“What use could this company make of an electric toy?” – Passing on an option to buy Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for telephones.

Missing anything? This is a collection in progress. If you recall stupid things executives have said, please leave them in the comments section for future additions.

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Take The Tour: The Business Blunders Hall of Shame

Related Blunders:

• Criminal corporations

• Executive misconduct

• Ponzi schemes

• Hall of Shame

• Blunder history

Some CEOs get a little too used to the people around them always saying yes.

Maybe this explains why they sometimes blow it all on love, or lust, or blatant sexual harassment.

Here’s a look at top CEOs who’ve lost their high-paying jobs for office naughtiness.

These are just some of the guys who got caught. And to think they were paid millions for their judgement.

Nestlé CEO Laurent Freixe – September 2025

The world’s largest food company caught it’s CEO Laurent Freixe in “an undisclosed romantic relationship with a subordinate” that violated its code of conduct. Then it gave him the ol’ Nestlé Crunch,.

Freixe had been CEO for only a year, but based on available compensation reports it appeared he lost a gig that paid about $13 million in total annual compensation.

He was hired to turn the tide on Nestlé’s sagging fortunes. At the time he was fired, Nestlé stock was down more than 30% since 2022 thanks to rising cocoa prices and sagging sales.

Freixe joined Nestlé in 1986 and worked his way through the executive ranks. He’s well-educated, speaks four languages, and spit out corporate platitudes like, “We are determined to regain this trust, and to again become the benchmark in our industry.”

But beyond his resume, we know so little about him that his name might as well be “Whatchamacallit.” We don’t even know who his romantic interest is or what this costly relationship entailed. As they say in the candy business, he’s kept it all under wraps.

Read More: The Chocolate Lover

Astronomer CEO Andy Bryon – July 2025

No CEO dalliance has rippled around the globe faster than Byron’s tryst with his human resource executive Kristin Cabot.

The pair simply panicked when they were caught canoodling on the jumbotron at a Coldplay concert. Their reaction prompted Coldplay frontman Chris Martin to speculate: “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”

They both resigned from the startup, which builds platforms for orchestrating and managing data pipelines, And it had just raised $93 million in venture capital funding.

Read More: Just Smile And Wave

Kohl’s CEO Ashley Buchanan – May 2025

Struggling retailer Kohl’s gave Ashley Buchanan a $20 million compensation package in hopes he could reverse its sagging fortunes. He was fired three months later for reportedly steering millions of dollars in business to his girlfriend.

“Before I took the job was when I assessed the entire business, I just saw opportunity, right?” Buchanan said in a March 2025 conference call.

Opportunity knocked … and it knocked Buchanan right out the door.

Read More: Million-Dollar Baby

Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw – September 2024

Never give your critics ammunition. Alan Shaw made this crucial mistake by having a tryst with the railroad’s Chief Legal Officer Nabanita Nag.

Activist shareholders were gunning for Shaw’s resignation as the railroad’s financial performance slid off off the tracks. Union employees were steamed about him, too. He was especially under pressure after a train derailment decimated East Palestine, Ohio, spilling 100,000 gallons of hazardous materials and costing the company about $1.7 billion.

Shaw kept his job through all of this, but his affair – which was against the corporate ethics policy and rife with conflicts – did him in.

What a train wreck.

Read More: Drivin’ That Train

Comtech CEO Ken Peterman – March 2024

A CEO who has an affair with an underling cheats on his company, his shareholders and often his spouse in a single folly. Ken Peterman may be a case in point.

The company wouldn’t say why it fired him last year, but it all came out after Peterman was arrested on insider trading and securities fraud charges in December 2024.

Before this series of blunders, Peterman was a well-respected aerospace and defense executive.

Comtech’s annual report once touted a line from a cloying profile on him: “Unique and visionary leadership through integrity, passion, and innovation are the qualities that define Ken Peterman.”

Integrity is something you have. Not something to tout in your annual report.

Read More: A CEO’s Road To Hell

Helios Technologies CEO Josef Matosevic – July 2024

Josef Matosevic ran a company that provided electronic controls technology, but he couldn’t control himself.

The company said it replaced him following an investigation into his consensual relationship with an employee.

“The Board does not tolerate any actions that are inconsistent with our Company’s values and code of conduct and upon notification of the allegations, took swift and decisive action,” the board’s chairman said in a press release.

Yeah, but for Helios, this was hardly the first time.

The company fired a previous CEO Wolfgang Dangel in April 2020 for the same thing.

Read More:

Helios Technologies Provides Update on Leadership Transition

Helios Technologies Announces Leadership Transition

BP CEO Bernard Looney – September 2023

Some CEOs treat their companies like a dating app.

BP CEO Bernard Looney resigned following an internal investigation that revealed not one, but multiple dalliances with colleagues. Looney was hired as a drilling engineer in 1991. He became CEO in 2020.

In an earlier investigation, he admitted to having affairs but didn’t disclose them all.

“All leaders in particular are expected to act as role models and to exercise good judgement in a way that earns the trust of others,” the London-base petroleum giant explained in a press release.

All that lovin’ cost him $40 million in severance.

Read More:

• BP CEO resigns

• BP’s former CEO is forfeiting $40 million in severance for misleading company board

CBOE Global Markets CEO Edward Tilly – August 2023

Edward Tilly joined CBOE as a floor trader in 1987 and worked his way through the ranks to become CEO in 2013.

He resigned after the board found he failed to disclose “personal relationships with colleagues.”

There was no telling how many relationships, but the trading company executive must have figured he had options.

Read More: Cboe Global Markets Announces Leadership Transition

NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell – April 2023

Comcast fired the head of NBCUniversal after an internal investigation corroborated allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination.

Jeff Shell had this much to say about it:

“I had an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the company, which I deeply regret. I’m truly sorry I let my Comcast and NBCUniversal colleagues down, they are the most talented people in the business and the opportunity to work with them the last 19 years has been a privilege.”

An “inappropriate relationship?” The company called it “sexual harassment.”

Was the Peacock streaming the wrong content?

Read More: NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell fired after allegations of sexual harassment were corroborated, Comcast says

Barclay’s CEO Jes Staley – November 2021

Jes Staley stepped down as CEO of Barclays after the British banking giant uncovered his ties to the infamous late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Later, Staley admitted in court that he had consensual sex with one of Epstein’s staffers. But he claimed he had no knowledge of the twisted financier’s “monstrous activities,” trafficking underaged girls to wealthy pedophiles.

In a 2010 email chain, Staley reportedly told Epstein: “That was fun. Say hi to Snow White.” Epstein asked, “What character would you like next?” Staley replied: “Beauty and the Beast.”

It could have been worse. At least he didn’t ask for the “Little Mermaid.”

Read More: Former JPMorgan and Barclays exec Jes Staley tells court he slept with Epstein assistant

McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook – November 2019

Mickey D’s fired its CEO Steve Easterbrook for a consensual relationship with an employee in November 2019. Several months later, an internal investigation uncovered even more inappropriate relationships with employees.

Then in 2023 the Securities and Exchange Commission fined Easterbrook $400,000 for allegedly lying about the terms of his firing in an attempt to keep his massive severance benefits.

Easterbrook ended up losing a $105 million severance package.

They say money can’t buy you love, but that would have been enough to buy more than 20 million Happy Meals.

Read More:

• McDonald's Corporation Announces Leadership Transition

• SEC Charges McDonald’s Former CEO for Misrepresentations About His Termination

Lululemon Athletica CEO Laurent Potdevin – February 2018

Laurent Potdevin stepped down following years-long romance with one of the company’s female designers.

“Lululemon expects all employees to exemplify the highest levels of integrity and respect for one another, and Mr. Potdevin fell short of these standards of conduct,” the company said in a news release.

Former employees told CNBC that the office romance was just one of the issues that led to Potdevin’s resignation. They complained that overall he instilled a negative and toxic culture.

Read More: Lululemon CEO left in part because of relationship with female designer at the company

Intel CEO Brian Kranzanich – June 2018

Brian Kranzanich stepped down from Intel after the chipmaker learned about his past consensual relationship with an employee.

“An ongoing investigation by internal and external counsel has confirmed a violation of Intel’s non-fraternization policy, which applies to all managers,” the company said.

The affair began a decade earlier and ended before he was named CEO in 2013, but it cost him a fortune once it was finally uncovered.

Kranzanich was making upwards of $21 million a year and enjoyed a generous package of perks, including transportation and personal security.

“That’s the power of Intel inside.”

Read More:

• Intel CEO Brian Krzanich Resigns, Board Appoints Bob Swan as Interim CEO

• New details emerge on the office affair that led to Intel CEO Brian Krzanich's surprising resignation on Thursday (INTC)

CBS CEO Les Moonves – September 2018

Les Moonves, who ran CBS for 12 years, was one of the most powerful men in media until a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct in articles in The New Yorker magazine.

CBS’s board announced it fired Moonves“for cause” and would not pay his $120 million severance package. Moonves annual compensation had totaled nearly $70 million in cash and stock over the previous two years two years.

The decision followed an investigation by two law firms that CBS’ board hired – Debevoise & Plimpton and Covington & Burling. And it came about a year after the network firedCharlie Rose, who was co-host of “CBS This Morning”over reports of sexual misconduct.

Could have been a miniseries.

Read More:

• Les Moonves and CBS Face Allegations of Sexual Misconduct (The New Yorker)

• As Leslie Moonves Negotiates His Exit from CBS, Six Women Raise New Assault and Harassment Claims (The New Yorker)

Kemet Corp. CEO Per-Olof Loof – December 2018

Per-Olof Loof resigned from this Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company following a consensual relationship with an employee.

“Mr. Loof’s departure follows an investigation … of the facts and circumstances surrounding a consensual personal relationship between Mr. Loof and an employee of the Company and related actions which were inconsistent with the Company’s policies,” the company said in a news release. “Mr. Loof will not receive any severance benefits.”

It was a pricey affair.

Read More: Kemet CEO Resigns Over Alleged Personal Misconduct

Priceline CEO Darren Huston – April 2016

Darren Huston resigned immediately after an internal investigation uncovered a personal relationship he had with an employee who was not even under his direct supervision.

“The investigation determined that Mr. Huston had acted contrary to the Company's Code of Conduct and had engaged in activities inconsistent with the Board's expectations for executive conduct, which Mr. Huston acknowledged and for which he expressed regret,” the company said in a news release.

“Everybody is in favor of finding love, but it’s got to be found in the right place,” Ted Snyder, professor of economics and management at Yale School of Management, told CNBC at the time.

Read More: Priceline CEO quits over personal relationship with employee

Tour The Business Blunders Hall Of Shame

Going back further, here’s a list of more CEOs who found themselves lost in love.

• American Apparel CEO Dov Charney – June 2014

• Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn – April 2012

• Highmark CEO Kenneth Melani – April 2012

• Stryker CEO Stephen MacMillan – Feb. 2012

• Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd – Aug. 2010

• Starwood Hotels CEO Steven Heyer – April 2007

• Boeing CEO - Harry Stonecipher – March 2005

Don't Miss These Blunders

Related Blunders:

• Criminal corporations

• CEO hubris

• Ponzi schemes

• Hall of Shame

• Blunder history

Subscribe free or paid to keep up with our endless financial foibles. It’s always cheaper to learn from someone else’s mistakes.

Tour The Business Blunders Hall Of Shame

Here’s a rolling archive:

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• The Substack Ponzi Tyler Bossetti built a huge social media following. His secret: 30% investment returns.

• A Friend Of A Friend Of Epstein Warren Buffett gave Bill Gates’ foundation $43 billion. Now he doesn’t even talk to the guy.
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• Banking On Epstein The sex trafficker couldn’t have done it without America’s biggest banks. Now Bank of America is paying off his victims.

• Back In The Box Renault-Nissan’s fugitive CEO Carlos Ghosn fled Japan in a crate. Now his Beirut refuge is under fire.

• The Wizard of Oz Goes to Florida Dr. Mehmet Oz is hunting healthcare fraudsters in the Sunshine State. Why? So they can run for governor or the U.S. Senate?

• Trailer Trash Solar A failed auto mechanic blew sunshine at Warren Buffett. Now even his lawyer is headed to prison.

• Billionaire Blind Spot A failed entrepreneur fleeced the super rich. His bankruptcy records were public

• Homer Goes to Hanford America’s Most Dangerous Nuclear Cleanup Runs Like a Simpsons Episode

• Walmart Keeps The Change You thought your tips were going to drivers who dutifully delivered your order. Guess again.

• Bombing Iran With Crypto Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in October. But a sworn U.S. enemy allegedly kept doing business through the sanctioned crypto exchange

• Double Duped L Brands founder Les Wexner says he was duped. But Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t the only one accused of molesting fashion models at his companies.

• Sultan Of Sleaze The CEO of one of the world’s largest port mangers was sunk by his own send button – exchanging emails with Jeffrey Epstein

• An Epstein Valentine Goldman Sachs General Counsel Kathy Ruemmler will eventually resign after her chummy relationship with the world’s most notorious pedophile is exposed

• Bad Moon Rising His digital token was supposed to fly to the moon. It landed him in prison.

• Party With Mr. Dahmer Spinmeisters should substitute ‘Epstein’ with ‘Dahmer’ to hear how they creepy sound

• Red State Ripoff Insurance tycoon Greg Lindberg fleeced conservative retirees. Now he wants a Trump pardon.

• Fat Brands’ Debt Buffet Fatburger operator binged on other brands and choked on the tab

• Idiot Lights Wall Street lenders didn’t check the dashboard before First Brands blew the engine

• The Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat Canada’s WestJet may have just saved the world from the worst trend in commercial air travel

• This Is Sandgaard The CEO of Zynex Medical was indicted for health care and securities fraud. It could mark the end of his rock and roll fantasy.

• Needless Markup Amazon’s $475 million bet on the Saks-Neiman Marcus merger goes to zero in bankruptcy court

• Was Maxwell Smart? Ghislaine Maxwell lived her life between two international crooks: Her father Robert Maxwell and sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. Some people think they were spies.

• Volkswagen Dipsticks German automaker burns trust even faster than oil

• Pork Jello Sandwich Do you mean the McRib isn’t actually made from real rib meat? Say it ain’t so.

• Biggest Business Blunders Of 2025 It was a year of forbidden love, economic anxiety, corporate breakups, bankruptcies, CEO resignations, Jeffrey Epstein, and the Tesla Chainsaw Massacre

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• Tax Time For A Dead Billionaire Texas businessman Robert T. Brockman coughs up $750 million from beyond the grave.

• Going All Enron On Them Before subprime auto lender Tricolor imploded, its CEO allegedly proposed one of the dumbest stunts in corporate history

• Kat’s Creepy Creations Where can you buy human body parts? Try Harvard Medical School.

• How To Rob A Greedy Bank Mary Carole McDonnell has been retired for seven years after allegedly defrauding banks that didn’t bother checking out her story

• Small Town Bankster Reckless lending, casino gambling and allegedly doctored books led to the demise of a century-old community bank. Now its CEO faces prison time.

• JPMorgan Chase Can Check Their Butts A young entrepreneur duped the bank out of $175 million. Now her defense lawyers are billing the bank for cellulite butter.

• Be Thankful For 3D-Printed Chicken Soup Campbell’s fired an employee without first asking the right questions. Now he’s putting a big dent in its can.

• Straighten Up And Fly Right Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says, ‘The Golden Age of Travel Starts With You,’ as the horrifying passenger antics continue

• Winter Is Coming For Summers I warned readers about Larry Summers’ gross incompetence in 2013. Now it’s back on full display in emails with Jeffrey Epstein.

• Pardon My Ponzi Twice-convicted swindler Eliyahu Weinstein got a Trump commutation. Now he’s going to back to prison for a third fraud.

• Insuring Lust AIG can’t seem to find a faithful man

• Networking With A Pedophile Goldman Sachs defends its general counsel after her chummy relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is exposed

• Getting Sondered Marriott screws its guests as its short-term rental partner files bankruptcy

• Felons Fly Free Boeing beats criminal charges for its deadly 737 Max crashes only to be accused of more negligence in this week’s fatal MD-11 crash

• White Pizza Seven years ago, Papa Johns’ founder resigned after making racist remarks. Today, the company is struggling with its damaged brand.

• Dead Meat The hype on Beyond Meat was beyond reason. Note to investors: It’s mashed peas.

• A Dead Billionaire Defaults Gary Winnick, the late founder of a failed telecom startup, sacks his lender from beyond the grave

• Dr. Lie Erik Lie, a finance professor at the University of Iowa, catches cheats. His numbers don’t lie.

• Hi-Yo Silver, Away NBA Commissioner Adam Silver placed a big bet on legalized sports gambling. He didn’t anticipate the alleged corruption that came with it.

• There’s No Such Thing As A Green Bank Or A Fair Game Banking is corrupt. Basketball is corrupt. This week’s news blows it all out in the open.

• Too Big To Jail Jeffrey Epstein couldn’t have done it without America’s biggest banks, a new lawsuit alleges. Watch them settle quietly and move on.

• Parts Is Parts A secretive billionaire just exited from one of the biggest corporate scandals in years. It began with auto parts.

• Go Suck A Lemon Lululemon has a message for its loudmouth founder, and it’s not namaste

• Ain’t No Billionaire’s Son David Bren, the disowned son of the nation’s richest real estate mogul, sold his investors the ‘ultimate man cave.’ Then he caved.

• Power Outage Illinois’ longest-serving House Speaker will start serving prison time for his ComEd bribery scheme

• Wickedness On Wall Street Renowned financier Howard Rubin and his assistant were arrested for alleged sex-trafficking in a sex dungeon

• Bible Lessons From A Billionaire Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel says we should worry about the Antichrist. He would know.

• Get That Mouse Out Of The House Disney will pay a price for suspending Jimmy Kimmel, but how much?

• Lap Dance Dollars Executives from world's largest publicly traded strip club company allegedly bribed a public auditor to dodge $8 million in sales taxes

• From Baby Shower To Prison Shower Ian Gregory Bell celebrated with 75 guests. Six days later, he got three years.

• If You Build It, Chumps Will Come A father-and-son team fleeced municipal bond investors out of more than $280 million with an Arizona sports-park nightmare

• Reefer Madness The CEO behind Jim Beam and Maker's Mark resigns over CBD use

• Buffett’s Big Blunder At least the world's most-admired investor can admit he was horribly wrong about Kraft Heinz

• The Chocolate Lover Nestlé CEO Laurent Freixe just joined a litany of top executives who've lost their jobs to love

• The Apprentice Movie producer behind Trump biopic faces 300 years in prison for alleged scams of his own

• The Biggest Business Blunders Of All Time And the costly lessons they left behind.

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• Spoiled, Rotten Day Trader Ian G. Bell touted a wealthy background to allegedly dupe investors in his money-losing investment scheme

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• Big Blunders Come In Small Packages Macys blames an employee for hiding 'small package delivery' expenses. Anyone remember the boxes at Miniscribe?

• Billion-Dollar Reprobate Bill Hwang lost billions investing 'according to the Will of God.' Now he's going to prison for cheating Wall Street banks

• Hitting The 'Undo' Button At FTX Gary Wang wrote the code that enabled an $8 billion fraud. Prosecutors and a federal judge sang his praises

• Ponzi Once, Ponzi Twice A New Jersey man got probation for running a $300 million scam. Then he launched a $658 million fraud with ads on Fox News

• Hello? What About The $36 Trillion Tab? America's balance sheet is about to get worse and Republicans don't care

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• Bozo Bezos The Washington Post's billionaire owner makes a clownish excuse for killing a presidential endorsement

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• X Marks the Spot An Alabama man hacks the Securities and Exchange Commission with an iPhone, then returns it for a refund

• Danger, Will Robinson Destiny Robotics promised AI-powered humanoids that could form meaningful relationships, but it delivered a wig stand

• All the Kosher Meals You Can Eat Lufthansa gets sacked with a record fine for banning Jews from a flight

• Magic Mushroom ‘Pump and Dump’ Here's what can happen when 'shroom heads take control of a penny stock

• InHumana Bad reviews matter, and this health care insurer is paying a hefty price for ignoring them

• And the Winner is … Walmart The nation's largest grocer must be loving government efforts to break up the $25 billion Kroger-Albertsons deal

• The Incredible Shrinking Billionaire The chips are down for EchoStar's poker-playing Charlie Ergen

• Plastic Balls ExxonMobil put polymers in our testicles

• Bankster Bonus A top Old National Bank executive bags $2.6 Million after his arrest for allegedly molesting a child

• Watery Grave CEOs usually don't implode as literally as OceanGate's Stockton Rush

• Drivin’ that Train It's the end of the line for the embattled Norfolk Southern CEO

• Stinky Stonk Anatomy of a nightmare investment that's poised to get worse

• The Music Man Michael Smith allegedly played his AI-generated music billions of times to bots, ripping off streaming services and artists

• One Sorry Ferrari Online gaming CEO hustles car broker and scams investors with an IPO that never happened

• Adam Family Brothers allegedly raised $60 million with a phony crypto bot and spent investors' money on new homes and luxury goodsPiggy Banker A Bank CEO robs his own bank while crypto scammers rob him

• Clowns In Court An FTX felon wants to take back his guilty plea after prosecutors charged his girlfriend with campaign finance violations

• Piggy Banker A Bank CEO robs his own bank while crypto scammers rob him

• The Wonders of Blunders Why I follow business failures, and why you should, too.

• Holy Payday Batman A CEO bags $250 million driving his hospital chain into bankruptcy

• Design Your Life An alleged Ponzi schemer bagged $1 million a day with happy talk

• Nike Air Athletic-apparel giant's top executives preach climate change as they rev up their corporate jets

• If you can't woo 'em, sue 'em Elon Musk ran off advertisers; now he's suing them for leaving

• Drunken Chicken Tyson Foods' suspended chief financial officer could make a comeback

• In Real Life A "serial founder" finds a serial sucker in SoftBank

• Smoke on the Water Luxury Miami condo association sues to evict chain-smoking fraudster

• Beyond Stupid TV stock tips are for chumps

• Canary in a CrowdStrike Cybersecurity giant's blunder is a warning for the whole world

• Boeing’s Lost Spirit Outsourcing proves bad for business

• Lizards of Ozy The chameleons at failed Ozy Media are turning orange

• A Harvard Business Blunder Graduates duped in a ridiculous Ponzi scheme

• Con Air Fly the felonious skies with Boeing

• Smell the Glove Milwaukee Tool reeks of forced Chinese labor, lawsuit alleges

• Fisker the Frisker An electric car entrepreneur offers a valuable business lesson: If at first you don't succeed, file, file again

• Musk Mouth It takes a genius a long time to address an obvious blunder

• Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word A simple apology proved difficult for crypto tycoon Do Kwon after the $45 billion collapse of his Terraform Labs

• Epoch Crimes The finance chief of a far-right publication allegedly went far wrong

• Ticketbastard Live Nation deserves every ounce of contempt it has provoked

• How to Boil a Lobster Endless shrimp didn't drive this soggy seafood chain into bankruptcy

• Take Out Your Trash The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. insures bank deposits, bullies, racists and sexual predators

• Sam in the Slam FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried invests in beans and rice

• Billionaire Prison Time Here's how a hedge fund honcho managed incarceration

• ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ Saves Crypto promoter charged with dodging $48 million in taxes

• The Power of Red Failed Republic First Bancorp learns that 'fans' are fickle

• Our Deadhead Fed Head Jerome Powell has flubbed inflation

• Google This Billionaire A Silicon Valley legend makes his dumbest trade ever

• Don’t Listen to Sam Boeing engineer warns of 'catastrophic accidents and passenger fatalities'

• Calling Spirit Airlines on the Ouija Board Will customers miss this carrier if it dies?

• Musk’s F-Ing Message The genius of our age is scaring Tesla's customers

• A CEO Who Made His Bed Mattress Firm's latest buyer may be short on memory foam

• They Bought Crypto From a Klepto FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's trail of tears spills into court

• What’s in Your Wallet? Abusing company credit cards is a common employee grift

• My Latest Blunder Lessons from an epic failure at The Messenger

Business Blunders happen even in a growing economy. Bankruptcies never go out of style. Fools keep parting with their money. And the cycle of fear and greed never ends.

Here are some of the biggest Business Blunders of 2024.

It’s the economy, stupid

The biggest blunder of the year was a widespread misperception about the strength of the economy.

In the first quarter of 2024, the nation’s most prominent prognosticators finally admitted they were wrong about a coming recession. But most Americans held fast to their wrong-headed views, mostly because of political attacks leveraging anger about inflation.

The nation’s economy grew all year long and is in fact the envy of the world with a gross national product that grew 3.1% in the third quarter. The stock market remains near all-time highs. The unemployment rate is at a historically vibrant 4.1% and inflation is running at 2.7%, down from 9.1% in June 2022.

To be sure, the price of just about everything is still painful, but that’s not how to measure the strength of an economy. Homeowners and stock investors, for example, have done quite well during this period of incessant partisan whining.

Economists and politicians who put undue credit or blame on a single president for the performance of a massive economy are either dishonest or need to take an Econ 101 course.

Do they really think the new administration is going to do better (assuming that presidents really have all that much to do with it, anyway)?

There’s more to the story, but the rest is for paid subscribers.Please help make the business world a more honest, less reckless, less authoritarian place by:

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• And don’t miss these blunders.

Cyber-Insecurity

CrowdStrike, a firm that is supposed to protect its customers from cyber threats, unleashed one of history’s most destructive software bug in July, causing more than $5 billion in damages.

The glitch infected about 8.5 million computers with a “blue screen of death,” shuttering governments, businesses, hospitals, airlines and consumers around the globe.

Delta Airlines, for one, filed a lawsuit claiming more than $500 million in damages from canceled flights, ticket refunds and passenger accommodations. The health care industry suffered nearly $2 billion in estimated damages and the banking sector lost $1.15 billion.

We can only wait for another catastrophe like this to hit again as big tech consolidates and artificial intelligence accelerates.

Some stock analysts had predicted CrowdStrike would be “the hottest software stock of 2024.” Its shares plunged 44% when the outages hit, but it has largely recovered, even if many of the company’s customers have not.

Fly the felonious skies

Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a felony in July for misleading regulators about its 737 Max jetliner before two of its planes crashed and killed 346 people.

But a judge rejected the plea deal earlier this month because he didn’t like the diversity, equity and inclusion provisions for choosing a compliance official to oversee the agreement.

Many observers thought it was too much of a sweetheart deal, anyway. And so what? Boeing is already a convicted felon and it’s too big to jail.

Most people don’t remember the conviction Boeing racked up in 1989 for breaching national security, or its other past convictions.

It didn’t help when a door plug blew out mid-flight on an Alaska Airlines flight in January, terrifying passengers. Or when former Boeing engineers testified in Congress that Boeing wouldn’t hear their safety concerns about cost-cutting and outsourcing. Or when its Starliner stranded astronauts in space. Or how American Airline has to cut international flights because it can’t get Boeing jets. Or … (name your favorite Boeing fiasco here.)

FTX: From bitcoin to beans

You’d think with all the billions Sam Bankman-Fried stole from his now-defunct crypto exchange FTX, he could have put up a better defense.

On March 28, Bankman-Fried, 32, received a 25-year prison sentence and a court order to forfeit $11 billion following his conviction on fraud, conspiracy and money laundering charges.

His girlfriend, Carline Ellison, who ran the intertwined firm, Alameda Research, testified against him and caught a break. She received only a two-year sentence in September for her role in the fraud.

Among other top executives convicted, FTX Digital Markets CEO Ryan Salame received a 7.5 year sentence last year. He tried to take back his guilty plea in August after prosecutors filed charges against his girlfriend, which he thought they would not do if he pleaded nicely. So sorry, Salame. Should have read the fine print in the plea agreement.

Somehow, Bankman-Fried got no love from our two-tiered justice system that usually favors people who steal enough money to afford top-notch legal counsel.

Both his parents are Stanford law professors, he had access to millions of dollars worth of lawyers, and none of them could save him. Goes to show that when you con Silicon Valley the way Bankman-Fried did, they can get you.

Bankman-Fried used to take private jets to FTX’s live-in headquarters in the Bahamas, and he put the FTX logo everywhere from a Miami basketball arena to a Formula 1 race car. He ran a memorable Super Bowl commercial staring comedian Larry David, courted many other celebrity endorsements, made huge donations to Democrats, and even bragged that he might one day buy Goldman Sachs.

Now he’s trading beans and rice from a prison commissary.

Typo of the year

To whoever wrote “wicked.com” instead of “wickedmovie.com” on Mattel’s packaging for commemorative dolls:

I know that horrible, sinking feeling and the shame of an error that everyone can see.

So sorry, but typos happen. Accidentally omitted words are one of my most common errors, and anyone laughing may be setting themselves up for their own stupid goofs.

The error on the doll boxes sent children to a porn site and Mattel into crisis PR mode. Two weeks before the highly-anticipated film hit theaters on Nov. 22, social media was abuzz about the gaffe.

“Parents are advised that the misprinted, incorrect website is not appropriate for children,” the toymaker said in news release. “We deeply regret this unfortunate error and are taking immediate action to remedy this.”

A South Carolina mother seeks $5 million in damages against Mattel claiming her young daughter went to the website. Her “minor daughter immediately showed her mother the photographs and both were horrified by what they saw,” the lawsuit reads.

And where were the parental controls on the home computers? Let’s just hope $5 million is enough for therapy.

Does Truth even matter?

In September, I noted the sharply plunging shares of DJT, the stock underlying Donald J. Trump’s Truth Social. The stock was down more than 77% from the blustering heights it achieved after it began trading publicly on March 26.

The company still loses money each quarter. It hasn’t provided audited financials. And now there’s this other social media outlet for Trump fans called X (or is that just president un-elect Elon Musk?).

Being right about the fundamentals doesn’t matter when you’re wrong about the momentum. At least have the nation got it wrong. Who knew America would actually elect a convicted felon to run the nation?

DJT shares have risen from the bottom price of $11.75 to nearly $36. And Trump’s stake is worth $4 billion – more than he’s ever dreamed of making hawking athletic shoes and Bibles.

Strike two for electric carmaker Fisker

Henrik Fisker abandoned investors, creditors, employees and customers on the side of road when his namesake electric car company filed bankruptcy in July.

It wasn’t his first massive failure. His first electric car company went belly up in 2013.

Why did anyone bet on him again? Fisker went public in 2020 through one of those low-accountability Special Purpose Acquisition Company, or SPAC, deals – raising billions from unwary investors. Its major offering was a seductive, but glitchy SUV called the Fisker Ocean.

Fisker’s market capitalization had once soared to nearly $8 billion, but it only delivered 6,400 vehicles.

Another lesson learned: If at first you don't succeed, file, file again.

Restaurants loaded their plates … with debt

It wasn’t the bungled endless shrimp promotion that sent Red Lobster into bankruptcy court in May.

The seafood peddler followed the same recipe that lands so many other companies into bankruptcy: Reckless amounts of debt.

After ditching its debt in a Chapter 11 reorganization, the iconic chain is now trying to claw its way back with a new owner.

It was a tough year for restaurants, sending more than 30 chains and large franchisees into banktupcy, including, TGI Fridays and BurgerFi.

Pepto Biz-Mol, anyone?

Spirit Airlines gave up the ghost

Spirit Airlines landed in bankruptcy court in November, piled with debt and suffering mounting losses as it battled increased competition.

This is the carrier that helped pioneer the business of luring customers with loss-leader fares and then slamming them with an annoying array of charges.

The Miramar, Fla.-based airline is a forerunner of everything we hate about commercial air travel, including fees just to carry your own damn bag on the plane.

The flaw in its business model is that it can easily be replaced by another set of number-crunching executives and investors willing to offer lower fares and show even lower corporate pride.

Spirit hopes to flutter out of bankruptcy early next year after stiffing its debtholders.

There’s no shame in it because the bankruptcy process has been one of the many ways U.S. commercial aviation has subsidized itself as it competes with deceptively low fares.

Legal woes mount for Ticketbastard

Some concert goers call it “Ticketbastard” for all the glitches and junk fees they suffer.

Ticketmaster doesn’t care. It’s too big to care. But this year, the U.S. Justice Department decided the folly had gone on long enough. In May, the regulator filed an antitrust lawsuit with 30 state attorneys general against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation Entertainment.

“Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. “The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”

In October, Ticketmaster customers slapped Live Nation with a lawsuit for the way it managed a data breach that exposed the information of 560 million users.

It took the company two months to discover the breach and four months to finally notify impacted customers.

The dumbest bank embezzlement ever

The CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart, Kan., embezzled more than $47 million and gave the money to crypto crooks.

The small-town bank subsequently failed in July 2023, and in August, a federal judge sentenced Shan Hanes, 53, to more than 24 years in prison after he pled guilty to embezzlement.

Bankers are supposed to be on high alert for hustles, but Hanes fell right into one. Inexplicably, he landed in a pig-butchering scam, which involves enticing victims to make increasing contributions by appealing to their greed until they are finally slaughtered.

The Year In Blunders

So many blunders, so little time.

I launched Business Blunders in March after getting laid off in February from another idiot-owned startup media company.

Most big business publications get their clicks telling readers what stocks to buy, which billionaires to worship and how maybe they can get rich one day, too.

I’d rather highlight the incompetence and dishonesty that pervades our financial world in hopes of making it a better place. I also want to leave readers with street smarts instead of market noise and hype.

Here’s a complete list of Business Blunders newsletters so far. I put out most of these pieces free, but posts more than three weeks old are archived for paid subscribers.

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Business Blunders is a reader-supported publication. Thanks so much for staying with me through 2024. Happy New Year!

• Go To Zelle This Week in Blunders – Dec. 15-21

• Basketball Jones Former Harlem Globetrotter and NC State point guard gets seven years for a Covid-19 loan scam'

• A CEO’s Road To Hell It began with forbidden love and ended in felony charges for Comtech’s Ken Peterman

• Sorry About That Opiod Thing This Week In Blunders – Dec. 8-14

• Spoiled, Rotten Day Trader Ian G. Bell touted a wealthy background to allegedly dupe investors in his money-losing investment scheme

• Shot In The Back Did maddening back pain drive Luigi Mangione to murder UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson?

• The Killionaire Here's why the man who gunned down UnitedHealthcare's CEO became an instant folk hero

• Enron Was A Parody Of Itself Here's where CEO Ken Lay ate before he died

• Big Blunders Come In Small Packages Macys blames an employee for hiding 'small package delivery' expenses. Anyone remember the boxes at Miniscribe?

• Billion-Dollar Reprobate Bill Hwang lost billions investing 'according to the Will of God.' Now he's going to prison for cheating Wall Street banks

• Hitting The 'Undo' Button At FTX Gary Wang wrote the code that enabled an $8 billion fraud. Prosecutors and a federal judge sang his praises

• Ponzi Once, Ponzi Twice A New Jersey man got probation for running a $300 million scam. Then he launched a $658 million fraud with ads on Fox News

• Hello? What About The $36 Trillion Tab? America's balance sheet is about to get worse and Republicans don't care

• A Mouse That Roared A small-time CEO launched a proxy war with $17.32 in his company's brokerage account. Now he's going to prison.

• Bozo Bezos The Washington Post's billionaire owner makes a clownish excuse for killing a presidential endorsement

• CEOs Gone Wild Abercrombie & Fitch had to know its CEO was a freak

• X Marks the Spot An Alabama man hacks the Securities and Exchange Commission with an iPhone, then returns it for a refund

• Danger, Will Robinson Destiny Robotics promised AI-powered humanoids that could form meaningful relationships, but it delivered a wig stand

• All the Kosher Meals You Can Eat Lufthansa gets sacked with a record fine for banning Jews from a flight

• Magic Mushroom ‘Pump and Dump’ Here's what can happen when 'shroom heads take control of a penny stock

• InHumana Bad reviews matter, and this health care insurer is paying a hefty price for ignoring them

• And the Winner is … Walmart The nation's largest grocer must be loving government efforts to break up the $25 billion Kroger-Albertsons deal

• The Incredible Shrinking Billionaire The chips are down for EchoStar's poker-playing Charlie Ergen

• Plastic Balls ExxonMobil put polymers in our testicles

• Bankster Bonus A top Old National Bank executive bags $2.6 Million after his arrest for allegedly molesting a child

• Watery Grave CEOs usually don't implode as literally as OceanGate's Stockton Rush

• Drivin’ that Train It's the end of the line for the embattled Norfolk Southern CEO

• Stinky Stonk Anatomy of a nightmare investment that's poised to get worse

• The Music Man Michael Smith allegedly played his AI-generated music billions of times to bots, ripping off streaming services and artists

• One Sorry Ferrari Online gaming CEO hustles car broker and scams investors with an IPO that never happened

• Adam Family Brothers allegedly raised $60 million with a phony crypto bot and spent investors' money on new homes and luxury goods

• Clowns in Court An FTX felon wants to take back his guilty plea after prosecutors charged his girlfriend with campaign finance violations

• Piggy Banker A Bank CEO robs his own bank while crypto scammers rob him

• The Wonders of Blunders Why I follow business failures, and why you should, too

• Holy Payday Batman A CEO bags $250 million driving his hospital chain into bankruptcy

• Design Your Life An alleged Ponzi schemer bagged $1 million a day with happy talk

• Nike Air Athletic-apparel giant's top executives preach climate change as they rev up their corporate jets

• If you can't woo 'em, sue 'em Elon Musk ran off advertisers; now he's suing them for leaving

• Drunken Chicken Tyson Foods' suspended chief financial officer could make a comeback

• In Real Life A "serial founder" finds a serial sucker in SoftBank

• Smoke on the Water Luxury Miami condo association sues to evict chain-smoking fraudster

• Beyond Stupid TV stock tips are for chumps

• Canary in a CrowdStrike Cybersecurity giant's blunder is a warning for the whole world

• Boeing’s Lost Spirit Outsourcing proves bad for business

• Lizards of Ozy The chameleons at failed Ozy Media are turning orange

• A Harvard Business Blunder Graduates duped in a ridiculous Ponzi scheme

• Con Air Fly the felonious skies with Boeing

• Smell the Glove Milwaukee Tool reeks of forced Chinese labor, lawsuit alleges

• Fisker the Frisker An electric car entrepreneur offers a valuable business lesson: If at first you don't succeed, file, file again

• Musk Mouth It takes a genius a long time to address an obvious blunder

• Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word A simple apology proved difficult for crypto tycoon Do Kwon after the $45 billion collapse of his Terraform Labs

• Epoch Crimes The finance chief of a far-right publication allegedly went far wrong

• Ticketbastard Live Nation deserves every ounce of contempt it has provoked

• How to Boil a Lobster Endless shrimp didn't drive this soggy seafood chain into bankruptcy

• Take Out Your Trash The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. insures bank deposits, bullies, racists and sexual predators

• Sam in the Slam FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried invests in beans and rice

• Billionaire Prison Time Here's how a hedge fund honcho managed incarceration

• ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ Saves Crypto promoter charged with dodging $48 million in taxes

• The Power of Red Failed Republic First Bancorp learns that 'fans' are fickle

• Our Deadhead Fed Head Jerome Powell has flubbed inflation

• Google This Billionaire A Silicon Valley legend makes his dumbest trade ever

• Don’t Listen to Sam Boeing engineer warns of 'catastrophic accidents and passenger fatalities'

• Calling Spirit Airlines on the Ouija Board Will customers miss this carrier if it dies?

• Musk’s F-Ing Message The genius of our age is scaring Tesla's customers

• A CEO Who Made His Bed Mattress Firm's latest buyer may be short on memory foam

• They Bought Crypto From a Klepto FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's trail of tears spills into court

• What’s in Your Wallet? Abusing company credit cards is a common employee grift

• My Latest Blunder Lessons from an epic failure at The Messenger