Dark Money: True Crime Finance

It rented office space. It was valued at forty-seven  billion dollars. Its CEO sold the company the  trademark for the word We, borrowed money from it,  appointed his wife as a succession consultant,  and declared his mission was to elevate the world's  consciousness. Then the IPO prospectus was published  and the public markets asked a simple question. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime F...

Zero to four thousand locations in eighteen months.  A NASDAQ IPO at four point five billion dollars.  Analyst coverage calling it the most exciting food  and beverage story in China. And three hundred and  ten million dollars in sales that an eighty-nine  page anonymous report revealed had never happened. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes  inside Luckin Coffee — how phantom corp...

Nobody outside a small circle of Wall Street banks  had heard of Archegos Capital Management before  it collapsed. Within forty-eight hours it had lost  twenty billion dollars, triggered ten billion in  bank losses, and contributed to the eventual demise  of one of Europe's oldest financial institutions. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes  inside Archegos — how Bill Hwang used...

Eleven and a half million documents. One hundred  and forty-three politicians. Twelve current and  former heads of state. A single anonymous source  who handed the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung  the architecture of the offshore financial world  that the wealthy had been using for decades to  make their money invisible. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes  inside the Panama P...

She sold four billion dollars worth of a  cryptocurrency that had no blockchain. No coin.  Just a database her company controlled. Then in  two thousand and seventeen she boarded a plane  in Sofia and was never seen again. Ruja Ignatova  is on the FBI most wanted list. She has not been found. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes  inside OneCoin — the largest cryptocurrency fraud  in...

The employees weren't stealing for themselves.  They were opening fake accounts to hit sales targets  set by a management system that punished failure  and rewarded numbers — real or invented. Three point  five million unauthorised accounts. Fees charged  to customers who had no idea they existed. And a  bank that called itself a community institution  while mining its own customers for quota...

Eleven million vehicles. Software that detected  when an emissions test was running and switched  into compliance mode — then switched back the  moment the test ended, pumping out up to forty  times the legal limit of nitrogen oxide. The  defeat device was not a rogue piece of code.  It was a corporate decision. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes  inside the Volkswagen emissions s...

It underpinned three hundred and fifty trillion  dollars in financial contracts worldwide — mortgages,  student loans, credit cards, corporate debt. And for  years, traders at major banks were manipulating it  over emails that talked about champagne, favours,  and being a big boy. Done. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes  inside the LIBOR scandal — how the most important  benchmar...

In private emails, Angelo Mozilo described some of  his own mortgage products as toxic. As the most  dangerous product in existence. He kept selling  them anyway — to millions of American homeowners  and to the investors who bought securities backed  by those loans. Nobody told those investors what  the CEO was writing in private. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes  inside Country...

Over one thousand banks failed. The bailout cost  taxpayers one hundred and sixty-four billion dollars.  More than a thousand industry insiders were convicted  and sent to prison. It was the largest fraud wave  in American financial history — and most people  today cannot name a single person involved. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes  inside the savings and loan crisis — how de...

For nearly twenty years, Russell Wasendorf Senior  intercepted letters from his bank, altered the  balance figures in Photoshop, and submitted the  forged documents to regulators as genuine. Two  hundred and fifteen million dollars in client funds  was missing. When electronic verification finally  bypassed his post office box, he drove to the  company car park and wrote a confession. This episode...

John Rigas built Adelphia Communications over fifty  years from a single cable franchise into one of  America's largest companies. Then it emerged that  he and his sons had been treating it as a personal  bank account — two point three billion dollars  borrowed, a golf course built, a town that had  built its economy around a family now watching  that family led away in handcuffs. This episode...

He was one of the most successful hedge fund managers  in the world. He was also, according to federal  prosecutors, the centre of the most extensive insider  trading network in Wall Street history. And the FBI  had it all on tape. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes  inside the Galleon Group investigation — how the FBI  applied wiretap techniques from organised crime  prosecutions...

Two Nobel Prize winners. A team of the most  mathematically gifted traders in the world. A model  that was supposed to be infallible. And leverage  ratios so extreme that when Russia defaulted on its  debt in 1998, the entire global financial system  came within days of seizing up. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes  inside Long-Term Capital Management — how a hedge  fund built on...

Goldman Sachs CEO. US Senator. Governor of New Jersey.  Jon Corzine had one of the most impressive resumes  in American finance and politics. Then he ran a  commodities brokerage, made a catastrophic bet on  European debt, and one point six billion dollars  in customer funds went missing. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes  inside the collapse of MF Global — how customer  accounts...

It survived the Civil War, two World Wars, and the  Great Depression. It took a single accounting  manoeuvre — used deliberately, repeatedly, and with  full knowledge of senior management — to bring it  down in a weekend. Repo 105 was not a rogue trade.  It was a decision. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes  inside the collapse of Lehman Brothers — how fifty  billion dollars was t...

He didn't wait to be caught. On January the seventh, two thousand and nine, the chairman of one of India's largest technology companies wrote a letter to his board admitting he had falsified accounts for years. No charges. No arrest. Just a letter. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes inside the Satyam scandal how one point four billion dollars in cash that didn't exist...

Every CFO he hired eventually went to prison. Richard Scrushy ran America's largest rehabilitation hospital company, hosted a Christian television programme, and presided over a two point seven billion dollar accounting fraud that required the active participation of his entire finance department. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes inside HealthSouth the fraud, the acquittal t...

It put milk in a billion homes across thirty countries. It sponsored Formula One. It was one of Italy's most beloved brands. And underneath the red and white carton was a fourteen billion euro accounting fraud held together, at the end, by a forged letter from a bank that confirmed it had sent no such letter. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes inside Parmalat Europe's Enro...

He was fifteen when he started it in his parents' garage. He was twenty when he rang the opening bell on Wall Street. Barry Minkow built ZZZZ Best into a two hundred and eighty million dollar public company with almost no real revenue, a completely fabricated business line, and an auditor he took on a tour of a building he didn't own. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes ins...

A tiny Canadian penny stock. A remote jungle in Borneo. Two hundred million ounces of gold that would have been the largest deposit ever found. And a geologist who fell from a helicopter four days before the whole thing unravelled. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes inside Bre-X Minerals the greatest mining fraud in history, the salted core samples that fooled the world, and the d...

Four hundred million dollars. A six thousand dollar shower curtain. A two million dollar birthday party with an ice sculpture that dispensed vodka. Dennis Kozlowski ran one of America's largest conglomerates and treated it as his personal bank account. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes inside Tyco International and the systematic corporate looting that turned a celebrated CEO...

Germany's most celebrated fintech company. A DAX-listed giant worth twenty-four billion euros. Audited by Ernst and Young. And one point nine billion euros on its balance sheet that simply did not exist. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes inside Wirecard how journalists and short sellers spent years raising alarms while regulators investigated the people asking questions inste...

He had a knighthood, a cricket tournament, and a Caribbean banking empire. Allen Stanford was one of the most celebrated financiers in the Americas until the SEC finally acted on warnings it had been receiving for over a decade, and the seven billion dollar fraud underneath it all was exposed. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance goes inside Stanford Financial Group —the offshore Ponzi s...

He wasn't a government official. He had no formal role, but Jho Low controlled everything and used a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund to throw celebrity birthday parties, buy superyachts, and fund Hollywood films while four and a half billion dollars meant for the Malaysian public disappeared. This episode of Dark Money: True Crime Finance follows the 1MDB scandal from Kuala Lumpur to the Baham...