The Complaints Department
Theranos Promised a Blood Test Revolution and Delivered a Fraud Conviction
The device that was supposed to run hundreds of tests on a finger-prick of blood mostly ran on investor faith and unmarked competitor's machines.
Luckin Coffee Faked $310 Million in Sales to Look Like the Next Starbucks
A short-seller sent people to count customers in and out of stores by hand. It turned out to be the most reliable accounting Luckin had.
Cheating in Video Games Started With a Debug Code a Developer Forgot to Delete. It's Now a $293 Million Subscription Industry.
What began as an accidental button sequence in a 1986 shooter is now aimbots-as-a-service, kernel-level anti-cheat spyware for the honest, and a black market bigger than most film releases.
FTX Was Worth $32 Billion in January and Bankrupt by November
Customer deposits were supposed to sit untouched at the exchange. Instead they went on a field trip to a hedge fund next door.
Crucial Existed for Nearly Three Decades. Micron Killed It the Moment AI Started Paying More.
Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, Western Digital, and Seagate all discovered the same thing at the same time: AI data centers pay more for memory and storage than you do. So now they sell to AI data centers.
A Chinese Vaccine Maker Faked Its Paperwork for Two Years Before Anyone Noticed
Changsheng supplied nearly a quarter of the country's rabies shots. Regulators only found out the records were fiction after a tip from inside the building.
Enron Was America's Most Admired Company Right Up Until It Was a Crime Scene
Fortune named it America's most innovative company six years running. The innovation, it turned out, was mostly in the accounting.
Facebook Let a Personality Quiz Harvest 87 Million Profiles
One professor's app collected data on 300,000 people who took a quiz, and on 87 million people who never touched it.
China's Biggest Baby Formula Maker Was Cutting Milk With Plastic
Melamine made the protein numbers look right on a lab test. It did not make the formula safe to actually feed a baby.
This Site Almost Had the .com. Someone's Been Sitting on It for decades.
We went looking for the nicer version of our own domain name. We found a Network Solutions error page that hasn't changed in over a decade, and a 'Coming Soon' banner that's been coming soon since 2025.
Volkswagen's Diesel Cars Were Only Clean When Someone Was Watching
For nine years, 11 million cars ran a second, secret program whenever a lab was watching. The rest of the time, they just breathed normally.
The Man Who Rigged McDonald's Monopoly Game for a Decade (1989–2001)
For twelve years, the house always won the McDonald's Monopoly game — because the house was stealing the winning pieces.