A 2011 storage bug emptied Gmail inboxes; only offline tape backups brought them back
A storage software update hit every copy of some Gmail mailboxes at once in February 2011 — only offline tape backups brought the mail back.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDChina's largest car dealer booked its first loss since listing
Zhongsheng, No.1 dealer by revenue, was profitable every listed year until FY2025: ¥164.4B of sales, a ¥1.673B loss, and ¥3.174B of gross loss on cars.
Read the caseAnthropic settled a $1.5B copyright lawsuit — the price of training AI on pirated books
Anthropic downloaded 500,000 copyrighted books from pirate sites to train its AI, then paid $3,000 per work to settle
Read the caseBMW's MINI caused a $530M-view PR crisis over a tub of ice cream in Shanghai
A video of MINI staff refusing ice cream to Chinese visitors while giving it to a Westerner sparked a firestorm that 530 million people watched on Weibo
Read the caseHomejoy grew on $19 cleanings and died on contractor lawsuits
The Y Combinator cleaning startup raised $40M and expanded to 31 cities; four worker-classification lawsuits and a failed Series C ended it on 31 July 2015.
Read the caseKawakin dampers met national rules, failed contracts — so staff rewrote the test data
Five days after KYB's damper scandal, Kawakin checked itself and found its own: dampers in 93 buildings missed customer specs, test data rewritten to pass.
Read the caseTilburg University social psychologist Diederik Stapel faked data; 58 papers retracted
Diederik Stapel was a star of social psychology who won awards for elegant studies. In 2011 he was exposed for fabricating data; 58 papers were retracted.
Read the caseJulien Macdonald dressed Beyoncé and went to Givenchy — his label was liquidated in 2023
The Welsh designer's company entered creditors' voluntary liquidation in July 2023 after COVID revenue losses and the collapse of Debenhams.
Read the caseAsia Pacific Telecom chose CDMA2000 — and became the loneliest network in Taiwan
APT paid NT$10.57B for a CDMA2000 3G license, then its parent embezzled NT$32B, and Foxconn couldn't fix it. Far EasTone absorbed it in 2023.
Read the caseBitfinex's 119,754-bitcoin hack ended with its launderers in prison
A 2016 breach drained nearly 120,000 bitcoin from Bitfinex. Six years later the DOJ made its largest-ever seizure; in 2024 the laundering couple was sentenced.
Read the caseChina Aviation Oil — $550M in unauthorized oil trades, the CEO went to jail
A Singapore-listed Chinese oil company lost $550M on derivatives. The CEO was prosecuted. It was Singapore's biggest financial scandal since Barings.
Read the caseAmul's 'real milk' ads never named HUL — courts still froze them for three summers
Amul campaigned that rivals' frozen desserts used vanaspati oil, not milk. HUL sued without being named — and won injunctions, then a court-ordered edit.
Read the caseA variable shadowing bug in Linear skipped a permission filter, exposing private team data
Linear's access-control optimization had a variable shadowing bug that let workspace members see private team data for ~1 hour.
Read the caseWells Fargo's servicing failures cost $3.7B — the CFPB's largest-ever penalty
From 2011 to 2022 Wells Fargo misapplied auto payments, denied mortgage modifications and froze a million accounts — 16 million customers in a $3.7B settlement.
Read the caseToridoll took a flat 1.1% 'system fee' off 37 food suppliers' invoices for two years
Marugame Seimen's parent skimmed 1.1% off every food-supplier invoice as a 'system usage fee' — ¥147 million in 17 months.
Read the casePerfect Diary went from $16B to $378M — the D2C bubble that burst
China's hottest beauty startup spent 68% of revenue on marketing, lost ¥6.5B in five years, and saw 97% of its market cap evaporate
Read the caseNasty Gal grew 11,200% in three years, then filed for bankruptcy in ten
Sophia Amoruso built a $24M fashion brand from eBay vintage. A pregnancy-discrimination lawsuit, toxic culture claims and Chapter 11 followed. Boohoo bought it.
Read the caseTerreStar launched the largest commercial satellite ever, went bankrupt 15 months later
TerreStar-1 was the largest commercial telecom satellite ever built. Fifteen months after launch, its hybrid satellite-cellular network filed for Chapter 11.
Read the caseBrigham and Women's Hospital paid $10M over Harvard lab's fabricated heart-muscle data
Piero Anversa's lab drew $42M in NIH funding on a finding nobody else could replicate; Harvard requested 31 retractions and the hospital paid $10M to settle.
Read the caseFerragni's pandoro scandal outlived the news cycle — her stores paid for it
Fenice Retail, the Milan and Rome shops selling Chiara Ferragni's brand, lost €1.2M over two years and was put into liquidation in June 2025.
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