The Outrageous Acts Of Criminally Charged Corporations
How crooked is Big Business? Check out the rap sheet
“In today’s regulatory environment, it’s virtually impossible to violate rules.” – Bernie Madoff.
Boeing’s trial on criminal charges is off after a federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, nixed a June 23 trial.
In July 2024, the aerospace giant agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges for the 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. But the U.S. Justice Department has since agreed to let Boeing glide.
What’s another felony going to do, anyway? Boeing is already Con Air. And “For Big Companies, Felony Convictions Are a Mere Footnote,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
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.
Don’t Miss These Blunders
Take The Tour: The Business Blunders Hall of Shame.
How crooked are corporations? Here’s a data base from the Justice Department. And here’s the Blunder List of some the world’ biggest corporate crooks:
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Who needs tariffs? Just prosecute more companies since it seems like a good revenue stream. 🙄