Investigations
Somebody kept paperwork, and eventually somebody else read it.
PG&E Was Already on Federal Probation for Killing 8 People. Then Its Equipment Killed 85 More.
A century-old hook PG&E never climbed up to inspect started the Camp Fire while the company was still under federal criminal probation for the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion that killed 8 people.
A Branch With 0.5 Percent of Danske Bank's Assets Moved €200 Billion. Nobody Asked Why.
A tiny Estonian branch of Denmark's largest bank moved roughly €200 billion in mostly Russian-linked money over eight years while a whistleblower's warnings sat unread for three.
Wirecard's €1.9 Billion Never Existed. Germany's Regulator Investigated the Journalists Who Said So First.
A DAX-30 fintech worth more than Deutsche Bank collapsed when €1.9 billion in claimed Philippine bank accounts turned out never to have existed, but Germany's financial regulator had spent 2019 investigating the reporters who found that out, not the company.
Takata's Airbags Had a Rupture Rate as High as 50 Percent. The Company's Own Emails Said "Happy Manipulating!!!"
Honda's own recall paperwork puts one Takata inflator's failure rate at up to 50 percent, and the Justice Department says Takata knew its propellant was degrading years before it told anyone.
GM Approved a Fix for Its Fatal Ignition Switch in 2006. It Gave the New Part the Same Number as the Old One.
GM engineers knew about a defect that could cut engine power and disable airbags as early as 2001, quietly fixed it in 2006 without changing the part number, and didn't recall a single car until 2014.
Britain's Post Office Prosecuted Over 900 Sub-Postmasters Using Software It Knew Was Broken. Fujitsu Still Won New Government Contracts.
The Post Office privately prosecuted more than 900 sub-postmasters on faulty Horizon accounting data it had internally logged as buggy for years, then watched Fujitsu keep winning UK government contracts through the scandal that followed.
The Sacklers Pulled $10.7 Billion Out of Purdue Pharma Before It Collapsed. They're Paying Back $7.4 Billion.
As Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to federal felonies and collapsed under opioid litigation, the family that owned it withdrew more money from the company than it ultimately agreed to pay back.
Germany Takes Almost Half Your Paycheck Before You See It. The Receipts Include a €5 Million Boat Used for Three Days.
A single German worker on an average salary hands over 46.6 percent of their total labor cost to the state before a euro reaches their account — income tax and social contributions combined, second highest in the OECD, beaten only by Belgium.
The World Has Three Pollution Leaderboards. Almost No Country Tops More Than One.
Clean air and a stable climate are, by any reasonable definition, nice things — free ones, in fact, that every human on Earth was born with a claim to. Figuring out who's spent that inheritance, and who's currently still spending it, turns out to require three separate
Customers Sent AI-Generated Photos of "Damaged" Sheets That Never Existed. Some Still Had the Watermark.
E-commerce retailers spent the last decade streamlining damage claims into something almost frictionless: send a photo of the torn or wrong item, get refunded, keep the item, no box to ship back. Late in 2025, Scott Tannen, CEO of the New Jersey bedding company Boll & Branch, went public
In China, a Mine Disaster Becomes the Central Government's Problem at 30 Deaths. In 2011, One Stopped at 29.
On October 29, 2011, a gas explosion tore through the Xialiuchong coal mine in Hengyang, Hunan province, with 35 miners underground. Six were pulled out alive. Xinhua's first report put the dead at 28. State television revised it upward the next day, to 29. There it stopped.
Walmart's Black Friday Doorbusters Killed a Man in 2008. The Fine Was $7,000.
Black Friday doorbusters exist to create exactly one feeling: get here first or lose out. On November 28, 2008, a crowd at a Walmart in Valley Stream, New York, took that feeling literally, breaking down the store's glass doors before opening time. Jdimytai Damour, a 34-year-old