SolarReserve's $1B Crescent Dunes solar tower barely ran — taxpayers out $225M+
The first US utility-scale molten-salt solar tower, built on a $737M federal loan, leaked, idled, lost its only customer, and left the DOE $225M short.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATED'Finanza, finanza e poi ancora finanza' — how Fila left Biella and came back Korean
The tennis brand born in Coggiola in 1911 was sold to a US fund in 2003, de-Biellized, then bought back by its own Korean licensee. Now the archive is home.
Read the casephil&teds hid fingertip amputations on clip-on chairs — $3.5M penalty, only $200K paid
Two children lost fingertips to the MeToo chair's clamps. phil&teds never told CPSC, handed investigators a doctored sample, and paid $200,000 of a $3.5M fine.
Read the caseFrench Connection built a global brand on 'FCUK' — then the slogan stopped working
The controversial FCUK campaign made French Connection a household name in the 1990s. By 2021, revenue had fallen to £71.5M and the company was taken private.
Read the caseLuzu TV's host announced Messi's father dead on air — ten sponsors left and the host went
Florencia Peña announced Jorge Messi's death live on Luzu TV; within hours sponsors were walking and the platform had fired her and the producers.
Read the caseMitsubishi Electric faked train AC inspections for 35 years, with a data program
The Nagasaki plant skipped required tests and printed plausible numbers with dedicated software that invented inspection data, from 1985 until June 2021.
Read the caseFive buzzword papers passed peer review — physics spent a decade saying no
Two French TV hosts got five buzzword papers into physics journals — and the editors spent a decade explaining why.
Read the caseGodfreys sold vacuums for 93 years — Amazon and the cost of living closed it in a season
Founded in the Depression, one of the world's biggest vacuum retailers. In January 2024: administration, 54 stores gone; by March, all of them.
Read the caseA media empire built on one name: Martha Stewart's conviction cost its stock 23% in a day
A $2 billion public company was a bet on one woman's image; her conviction cost its stock 23% in a day, and it never climbed back.
Read the caseBBC scrapped its £98m Digital Media Initiative after five years with nothing usable
The BBC gave Siemens a £79m no-bid contract, took the project in-house after 21 months of delay, then cancelled it in 2013 having written off £98.4m.
Read the caseCazoo went public via a $7B SPAC, then reverse-split its stock twice before delisting
The UK online car retailer raised $1.6B via a SPAC to fund expansion, lost over 97% of its market value in 18 months, and was delisted from the NYSE.
Read the caseFox removed Smollett from Empire after police called his attack a staged stunt
He reported a racist attack in January; within three weeks the police called it staged, and the studio cut his character from the season's last two episodes.
Read the caseAlibaba Cloud's access-key bug broke its console worldwide — then the spinoff died
A defect in its access-key service's exception handler produced an incomplete whitelist and took Alibaba Cloud's control plane down for 1h41m.
Read the caseYongcheng Coal defaulted on ¥1B while its books showed ¥46.9B cash — AAA to BB in one day
An AAA-rated state coal miner said it could not pay ¥1.03B, weeks after issuing fresh bonds. Regulators later found ¥86.1B of its reported cash did not exist.
Read the caseKansai Electric: 75 executives took ¥360 million in gifts from a town fixer
A utility fed a local fixer no-bid nuclear work for decades; he paid back its top brass with ¥360 million in cash — and the board was kept in the dark.
Read the caseDr Martens grew too fast after its IPO — and lost 80% of its value
Dr Martens' post-IPO rush to grow in the US created excess inventory, forced discounting, and damaged the brand. The stock lost 80% of its value.
Read the caseBrax's five-year couple bet on Schweinsteiger and Ivanović ended with separation reports
Brax booked Schweinsteiger and Ivanović as its faces until 2027; days after separation reports it cut the deal and scrapped the already-shot campaign.
Read the caseAmazon shelved a finished $25m film and settled Woody Allen's $68m lawsuit
Amazon ended its four-film Woody Allen deal in 2018 and shelved a completed film, then settled his $68m breach-of-contract lawsuit in 2019.
Read the caseLK-99: the 'world-first' superconductor that was copper sulfide and iron
Two preprints claimed the first room-temperature superconductor. Three weeks of global hype later, the miracle was copper sulfide impurities and a bit of iron.
Read the caseMegu: a Yamagata fashion chain opened six stores on debt and stopped trading
Megu, a Yamagata retailer of casual accessories for the young, stopped trading in February 2026 and entered bankruptcy prep with about ¥140 million in debts.
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