Investigations
Somebody kept paperwork, and eventually somebody else read it.
A 28-Year-Old Trader Hid £827 Million in Losses in an Account Numbered 88888. Britain's Oldest Bank Sold for £1.
Nick Leeson was both Barings' head trader and head of settlements in Singapore, checking his own work by design. The Bank of England's own inquiry called it a total failure of controls.
Toshiba Inflated Seven Years of Profits by $1.2 Billion Under a Program Called 'Challenges.' Three CEOs Signed Off on It, and the Company Still Isn't Publicly Traded Today.
Toshiba's own internal targets, called 'challenges,' were impossible to hit honestly. An independent panel found three consecutive CEOs knew. Eight years later, the company delisted itself entirely.
Blackwater Guards Killed 17 Iraqi Civilians in a Baghdad Traffic Circle in 2007. A Presidential Pardon Erased Their Convictions in 2020.
It took thirteen years, a dismissed indictment, a vacated murder conviction, and two retrials to convict the men who opened fire in Nisour Square. It took one afternoon in 2020 to undo it.
Nestlé's 'Milk Nurses' Dressed Like Doctors to Sell Baby Formula in the 1970s. Fifty Years Later, Its Baby Food Still Has a Double Standard.
A Swiss judge told Nestlé in 1976 to change how it marketed formula to mothers without clean water. A 2024 lab report found its baby cereal still has sugar removed for Switzerland and left in for everyone else.
Campact Asked 90 German Companies to Boycott 62 YouTube Channels for Hate Speech. It Won't Explain How It Picked Them.
In mid-August 2026, letters started arriving at the corporate communications departments of roughly 90 German companies — Aldi Süd, Edeka, dm, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, Rewe, Booking among them. The sender was Campact, a left-leaning campaign group best known for online petitions, and the letters came with an attachment:
Uber Ran a Secret Kill Switch to Wipe Its Servers During Police Raids. France's Economy Minister Was Helping the Company the Whole Time.
124,000 leaked Uber records show a kill switch used against police raids in six countries and a $90-million-a-year lobbying operation that reached Emmanuel Macron while he was still a minister.
Lehman Brothers Hid Up to $50 Billion in Debt Every Quarter With a Trick No US Law Firm Would Approve. It Found One in London Instead.
A court examiner found Lehman moved up to $50 billion off its books every quarter using a legal opinion no American law firm would write. Its auditor paid $109 million combined to settle over it. No executive was ever charged.
DuPont Knew PFOA Was Showing Up in a Worker's Newborn in 1981. It Took the EPA Twenty-Four Years and a Record Fine to Find Out.
DuPont found its own Teflon chemical in a baby's umbilical cord blood in 1981 and said nothing. The EPA didn't find out for 24 years — and its record fine amounted to about half a day of DuPont's revenue.
Ford Priced a Human Life at $200,000 to Decide Against a Recall. Indiana Charged the Company With Homicide Anyway, and a Jury Said No.
Ford's infamous cost-benefit memo wasn't even about the Pinto specifically. The death toll everyone cites (500-900) isn't the one the recall was built on (27), and neither kept Ford out of a homicide trial it still won.
At Least 34 Former German Lawmakers Went Straight Into Lobbying After Leaving the Bundestag. There's Still No Law Stopping Them.
Germany's insurance lobby alone spent €15.29 million influencing federal policy last year, filed correctly and on time. What the register still doesn't track is where the lawmakers go next.
A Teacher Joked About a Student on Snapchat. Police Were at Her School in an Hour, With No Human in Between.
Snapchat's AI flagged a private joke and routed it to the FBI, which routed it to local police, in under an hour. The federal watchlist center it fed into just asked vendors to help it predict who's next.
A Hacker Guessed 14,000 Recycled Passwords. 6.9 Million People's DNA Data Went Out the Door.
23andMe let a credential-stuffing attack on 14,000 accounts expose the genetic data of 6.9 million people, then went bankrupt and sold what was left of that data back to the CEO who was running it when the breach happened.