GMMTV cut Justin Moir, its new viral star, days after old posts surfaced
The 15-year-old actor had just gone viral off a hit GMMTV series when 2024 TikTok reposts surfaced; the agency ended his contract immediately.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDJibo: a $73M social robot shipped 3 years late into a smart-speaker world
Jibo raised $73M and a record crowdfund on an $899 'family robot', shipped three years late into a market of $130 smart speakers, and went dark in 2019.
Read the caseTGN1412 worked in monkeys — in 6 humans it caused catastrophic organ failure
A German biotech's drug seemed safe in monkeys — 6 healthy volunteers received it and within hours suffered catastrophic organ failure. TeGenero went bankrupt.
Read the caseNamyang Dairy edited its distributors' orders for years — the fine came to ₩12.5bn
Korea's biggest dairy pushed stock nobody had ordered onto 1,849 distributors and made them pay 63% of its promotion staff. A leaked call ended it.
Read the caseMing burned its treasure fleet — and handed the oceans to Europe
Zheng He's fleet was the largest in history. Confucian officials called it wasteful. The Ming destroyed the ships and banned ocean travel. Europe sailed in.
Read the caseAtari Jaguar — the '64-bit' console that killed Atari as a hardware maker
Atari launched the Jaguar in 1993 as the first 64-bit console. With only 63 games and a controller nobody liked, it flopped; Atari left the console business.
Read the caseFXCM lost $225M in a day when the Swiss franc surged — and was banned from US markets
When the Swiss National Bank removed its currency cap, FXCM lost $225M in hours. A $300M bailout saved it, but a fraud charge killed its US business.
Read the caseCBS paid for Janet Jackson's halftime moment with the FCC's biggest indecency fine
Nine-sixteenths of a second on live TV: a record $550,000 fine, vacated after eight years, and a career that paid anyway.
Read the caseHackers planted a backdoor in PHP's self-hosted git; the project moved to GitHub
Two commits signed as PHP's creator added an RCE backdoor to php-src. The response: shut git.php.net down and make GitHub the canonical repository.
Read the caseSculptor Capital fought its own founder, then sold itself for a fraction of its peak value
A hedge fund once worth nearly $50 billion spent years in open war between its founder and CEO, and was sold to a mortgage REIT for under $720 million.
Read the caseEMI and Warner Music: a $20B music giant died on a missed remedy deadline
EMI and Time Warner scrapped their 50-50 music JV in October 2000 after the European Commission said improved remedies arrived past the formal deadline.
Read the caseMannings was a big fish in Hong Kong. In mainland China it never scaled — then it left.
A 320-store Hong Kong beauty chain entered the mainland in 2004, peaked at ~200 stores, dwarfed by Watsons' 3,000, never profited, and in 2025 retreated home.
Read the caseBasicNet bought Woolrich Europe, then told 139 workers to move to Turin or quit
Weeks after the €90M takeover, the new owner ordered Bologna and Milan emptied — resignees would get no benefits. Strikes and political revolt forced a retreat.
Read the caseCryo Interactive made Dune and Atlantis — a decade later, one flop killed it
Cryo was one of France's oldest game studios, famous for Dune and Atlantis — then Frank Herbert's Dune flopped in 2002 and the company was liquidated.
Read the caseSloan-Kettering's own study found laetrile slowed mouse tumors — the hospital buried it
America's top cancer hospital tested laetrile to prove it useless; its veteran scientist's mice showed the opposite, so the results were buried for five years.
Read the case99 Cents Only Stores was born from a wine clearance that found the magic price point
Dave Gold inherited a liquor store. He priced slow wine at 99 cents to clear inventory — it sold out. He realized 99 cents was magic, and built a $1.6B chain.
Read the caseSydney's CBD light rail: a $517m mispriced business case grew into a $3.1bn project
NSW signed the $2.1bn light rail PPP with $517m of errors already in the $1.6bn business case; the line cost $3.147bn and opened a year late.
Read the caseTicketmaster's Eras presale: 3.5M fans, 2M tickets, then the public sale was canceled
Ticketmaster's biggest presale ever melted the site: hours-long queues, 3.5B bot-driven requests, a canceled public sale — then a class action and a DOJ suit.
Read the caseCNBC Awaaz anchor leaked his stock tips to a broker before air — both banned 5 years
The host of 'Pandya Ka Funda' passed each stock recommendation to a broker guest before air; SEBI proved it with phone records and a five-year ban.
Read the caseKim Ho-joong's DUI hit-and-run cost him every commercial in a week
Mr. Trot winner signed 10+ ads worth 2B won; a 2024 DUI hit-and-run erased them in a week and ended in a 2.5-year prison term.
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