While it had a precedence in what Adele Spitzeder of Germany and Sarah Howe of the US did in the 19th century, this Italian-American's "exploits" in the 1920s immortalized him forever in his namesake scheme that is also featured in Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit and Little Dorrit.
Charles Ponzi
This "too big to fail" insurance giant was in the news during the financial crisis of 2008 for the bonuses it paid to its executives despite receiving humungous bailout.
AIG
"The" economic bubble of the 18th century involved this British co. which was granted a monopoly to supply slaves to a certain geographic region. Because of the War of Spanish Succession, the plan never materialized and hence no profits were realized which bankrupted thousands.
South Sea Company/ South Sea bubble
He died at the age of 82 in prison; his son Mark committed suicide in 2012 and his other son Andrew died from cancer in 2014. Yet some say he did not suffer enough and they might be right. Who was this man played by Robert De Niro in the HBO film The Wizard of Lies and whose scandal was the basis for Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine?
Bernie Madoff
Economic collapses in the US and UK during various years of the 19th century (1819, 1847, 1873 among several others) all have this five-letter word appended to them as in "X of 1873". Where was Douglas Adams when he was needed?
Panic
Perhaps the biggest name in the lawsuits during the US opioid epidemic was this company which in 2007 paid a large fine for mislabeling OxyContin.
Purdue Pharma
As financial scandals go, Ivan Boesky and Jordan Belfort have each been convicted of insider trading and stock market manipulation. But what is an even more specific connection/commonality?
Ivan Boesky is said to be behind the character of Gordon Gecko in Wall Street and Jordan Belfort is behind The Wolf of Wall Street
One of the biggest scandals of the Gilded Age in the United States involved the Union Pacific Railroad which created this fraudulent company to inflate construction costs and raise money which was then used to bribe politicians for favorable legislation. Times never change!
Crédit Mobilier
The name ImClone may not ring a bell today but when this person, portrayed by Cybill Shepherd on film, sold its shares in 2001, the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) was not pleased.
Martha Stewart
The mother of all accounting scandals involved Enron and came to light in 2001. Can you name?
(a) The city the company was based out of at the time of the scandal
(b) The two key executives - the founder who died in 2006 before his sentencing and the CEO who served 12 years in prison
(c) The auditing firm that was effectively dissolved in the aftermath(a) Houston, Texas
(b) Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling
(c) Arthur AndersenPanamanian law firm that was one of the largest providers of offshore financial services until 2016 when it was discovered in the "Panama Papers" leak scandal that in many cases, it helped register empty shell companies and created false fronts.
Mossack Fonseca
The 1637 collapse of this commodity's market occurred during the Dutch Golden Age with some individual products like Semper Augustus and Viceroy. The event saw renewed interest in the 19th century with the 1841 publication of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay.
Tulip (mania)
"Junk bond king" and felon who was indicted for fraud in 1989 and pardoned by Donald Trump in 2020.
Michael Milken
Name of BP's oil rig that caused a giant spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the incident of which were dramatized in a 2016 movie starring Mark Wahlberg.
Deepwater Horizon
Satyam Computer Services was the center of a huge accounting scandal in this country when it emerged in 2009 that it inflated its earnings by $1.5 billion.
India
Nick Leeson, nicknamed "Rogue Trader", is notorious for bankrupting this bank in 1995 which at that time was UK's oldest merchant bank.
Barings Bank
The scandal involving this Canadian pharmaceuticals co. started in 2015 when US congress investigated the price hike of its drugs. Subsequent findings showed that the company’s strategy was to acquire other small companies rather than investing in its own R&D.
Valeant
The 18th crisis involving Scotsman John Law and his financing of Louis XIV's wars in return for privileges is called by the name of the company named for a certain region in the US.
Mississippi (bubble)
Outsourcing wars took a new meaning in 2007 when employees of this security providing firm killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad. The co. has since been renamed as Xe Services and is now called Academi.
Blackwater
The 2012 British scandal involving Barclays Bank in which banks lent each other money at high rates is known by this five letter name.
LIBOR (London Inter-bank Offered Rate)
When it went down on 14 September 2008, the bankruptcy of this behemoth became synonymous with the subprime crisis of 2008.
Lehman Brothers
The words "accounting scandal" and "telecom industry" should bring to mind this company which filed for bankruptcy in 2002 and which saw its CEO Bernard Ebbers spend years in prison as a result. It emerged from bankruptcy in 2003 under the name of MCI.
WorldCom
In 2015, it came to light that this co. installed ‘defeat devices’ to its diesel cars to manipulate nitrogen oxide emissions during laboratory testing.
Volkswagen (VW)
When this company that started in 2003 made a claim that it would revolutionize blood testing with tiny samples, it was literally too good to be true and it went down after investigations in 2015. Also name the founder who was called as one of the "World's Most Disappointing Leaders" by Fortune.
Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes
In September 2017, this company, one of the "big three" credit agencies was the victim of a major security breach and subsequent stolen data which impacted nearly 150 million American consumers.
Equifax
Dennis Kozlowski was the CEO of this New Jersey company and was convicted in 2005 for unauthorized bonuses to fund his extravagant lifestyle.
Tyco International
Privacy concerns were in the spotlight in 2018 when whistleblower Christopher Wylie revealed that Facebook allowed this company to harvest user data. The 2019 documentary The Great Hack exposed the nexus between this company and politics.
Cambridge Analytica