Prepare to be shocked by the most outrageous corporate decisions driven by pure greed! We're diving deep into the most catastrophic moments where companies prioritized profits over people, ethics, and basic human decency. From shocking price hikes to dangerous cover-ups, these stories will make your jaw drop!
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00:00And for him to really want to play this role of antagonist is something he played when he was reviled for raising the price of that life-saving drug Daraprim by 5,000%.
00:12Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most infamous times companies let financial greed dictate their decisions, leading to catastrophe for themselves, their clients, their employees, or the world.
00:22Then this past January, Boeing came inches from yet another catastrophe, as a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 plane at 16,000 feet.
00:34Number 10. Passenger Removal Incident, United Airlines.
00:37No, I'm not going. I am not going.
00:40We now know the passenger is 69-year-old Dr. David Dow of Kentucky.
00:44In 2017, United Airlines had a problem on a United Express flight from Chicago O'Hare International Airport.
00:50While many airlines conduct overselling policies to avoid no-shows taking up empty seats, this flight was overbooked.
00:55They wanted to board four employees of Republic Airways who were contracted to United Airlines.
01:00So the company offered rewards for four passengers to leave.
01:02However, with no takers, United randomly selected customers, which included Dr. David Dow.
01:07He couldn't miss the flight as he had patients the next day.
01:09Rather than be understanding, United called security who forcefully removed Dow, causing visible injuries.
01:14As footage of the incident caused outrage, United's share price dropped.
01:18For the first time tonight, we are hearing from the family of that doctor who was dragged off of a United flight.
01:23We have new details on his condition.
01:25Dow then threatened a lawsuit which caused the company to issue a settlement.
01:29Number 9. Daraprim Price Hike Touring Pharmaceuticals.
01:32Imagine for a moment popping a pill before bed that costs about $13.50.
01:37Now imagine waking up the next morning to find that the price of the exact same pill jumped to $750 overnight.
01:44Included on Forbes' 30 under 30 list for up-and-coming entrepreneurs, Martin Shkreli appeared to have the world as his oyster.
01:49In 2015, having already created one pharmaceutical company in Ritrofen, he founded Touring Pharmaceuticals.
01:55The company later bought the rights to the brand name medicine Daraprim, which is mainly used to treat the parasitic disease toxoplasmosis.
02:02What do you say to your critics, to people who say you're just being greedy?
02:06I think they have a fundamental misunderstanding of the way pharmaceutical companies operate.
02:11Later, Touring would increase Daraprim's price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
02:17Outrage from patients and medical professionals didn't cause the company to backtrack.
02:21Instead, rival companies developed a generic version of Daraprim.
02:24After Shkreli was put in jail for fraud, Touring, now known as Vieira Pharmaceuticals, settled an FTC case for $40 million for hiking the price.
02:32The so-called pharma bro has been sentenced to seven years in prison.
02:35Martin Shkreli is a former pharmaceutical executive who was convicted of defrauding investors.
02:41But he made headlines for hiking the price of the life-saving drug.
02:44Number 8. Crypto Catastrophe.
02:46Hawk to a coin.
02:47In 2024, an intoxicated Hayley Welch popped up on a video for the YouTube channel Tim and DTV to tell her intimate secret from men in the bedroom.
02:55What's one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?
02:58Oh, you gotta give him that hawk to and spit on that thing, you get me?
03:03From that, she became a viral hit.
03:05Capturing lightning in a bottle, Welch, armed with a team, began creating a media empire.
03:09However, by the end of the year, she went one step further by releasing the cryptocurrency meme coin, hawk to a coin.
03:15My hawk meme coin is live!
03:18Just hours after hitting the market, the coin's value plummeted by over 95%.
03:22Outraged investors accused Welch and hawk to a coin of stealing from them through insider trading or a pump-and-dump scam leading to a lawsuit.
03:30A viral meme coin tied to hawk to a star, Hayley Welch, is at the center of a lawsuit.
03:36Investors claim the hawk token, promoted using Welch's fame, wasn't properly registered as a security.
03:45Number 7. Not taking proper aviation safety measures. Boeing.
03:49189 people were aboard the Boeing 737 Max 8 as it plunged into the Java Sea early October 29th, just 13 minutes after takeoff.
04:00In 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 crashed. In 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 also crashed.
04:06There were no survivors. With both flights having used a Boeing 737 Max, the model was grounded worldwide.
04:12The investigation found that Boeing's Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, a flight-stabilizing feature, was a factor in both incidents.
04:19A new report detailing how that Boeing 737 Max jet was doomed almost immediately after takeoff.
04:26Boeing knew about problems with MCAS years before, but chose to do nothing to fix it to save money.
04:31The company also convinced the FAA to exempt the Max model from newer safety requirements, saving them billions in development.
04:37In 2020, the grounding was lifted. It's estimated that Boeing lost $20 billion in fines, legal fees, and compensation, on top of over $60 billion in lost sales.
04:46This is the second 737 Max to go down in five months, and this one will trigger international outrage and accusations of lies, fraud, and greed.
04:58Number 6. Pseudo-health claims. Theranos.
05:01The youngest billionaire in the world. Is that heady when you hear that?
05:06You know, it's not what matters. What matters is how well we do in trying to make people's lives better.
05:13Elizabeth Holmes grew to fame by founding the health technology company Theranos.
05:17She claimed they had found a way to reduce the need for vials of blood for testing.
05:20Instead, Theranos could perform the blood tests with a pinprick amount, and do so more accurately and quickly.
05:25In 2003, then-19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford and founded Theranos, with the hope of using small amounts of blood, just a few drops, to do what normally took numerous tubes.
05:37This skyrocketed Theranos to a $9 billion valuation as wealthy investors flocked to it.
05:42If it sounds too good to be true, that's because it was.
05:44In 2015, John Carreyrou revealed that the company was using older technology, not its patented Edison devices.
05:50Investigations found that Theranos had misled the public. In 2018, the company was dissolved.
05:54In 2022, Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months for fraud, and ordered to pay $452 million in restitution.
06:01Could he have gotten a lab result that was so askew that he didn't act on it, and then a month later he ended up having a heart attack?
06:09I'm not the lab director, and so...
06:11I know, but you're the CEO and founder of the company.
06:15Number 5. Paramilitary Group Involvement. Chiquita Brands International.
06:19Chiquita, the banana giant, found liable by a U.S. jury for funding a so-called Colombian death squad.
06:26Known formerly as the United Fruit Company, Chiquita became one of the world's biggest suppliers of tropical fruit, especially bananas.
06:32Yet behind their friendly logo, the company has been involved in several scandals to make money.
06:36In 2007, Chiquita admitted that it had paid the far-right paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, over $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004.
06:47In exchange, AUC would assist and protect the fruit company's operations.
06:50From 1997 to 2004, Chiquita, then known as the United Fruit Company, paid a right-wing paramilitary group at least $1.7 million.
07:01After pleading guilty to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, Chiquita had to pay $25 million in restitution.
07:07In 2024, a judge found Chiquita liable in a lawsuit filed by families of AUC victims, resulting in $38.3 million in damages.
07:15When they made the first payment, Chiquita makes this first payment to this terrorist group.
07:20I mean, it's FARC, their terrorist group.
07:23They understand that what they want to do is use that terrorist group to control people, citizens, that are objecting to the way that Chiquita is doing business there in Colombia.
07:43Rana Plaza, based in Bangladesh, was a clothing manufacturing company for various brands including Zara, Walmart, and Primark, among others.
07:51In 2013, the building collapsed, injuring 2,500 people and killing over 1,100.
07:55The investigation found the building's owner, Sahil Rana, had built the property without permits.
08:00Bangladesh has one of the largest garment industries in the world, and it's notorious.
08:05He had then installed three additional floors without proper support.
08:08The heavy, unsupported weight caused the collapse.
08:10Following the disaster, many clothing brands signed on to a factory safety pact that would involve paying for inspections and upgrades in the Bangladesh factories.
08:17But some major retailers refused, fearful of being taken to court.
08:20Companies including Walmart, Gap, and Target later agreed to their own safety plan, which was criticized for lacking legal commitments.
08:27The garment industry found a natural home in poorer nations.
08:31The way to provide an abundance of cheap, ready-made clothing is finding a huge labor pool that is paid little.
08:42Nestle collects millions of gallons a year from springs in Southern California, an area that's actually prone to drought.
08:48And as the company tries to meet the rising demand, activists are voicing their concern.
08:52In 2000, Nestle drew criticism for helping convince the World Water Council to change its statement on water being a right to a need to continue selling it to people.
09:00Over the years, the company has been involved in water scandals across North America.
09:04In Canada, the company's been accused of taking water with expired permits.
09:08That water's gone forever. You're removing it from the ecosystem every day, all the time.
09:13As well as imposing, you know, hundreds of millions of packages of plastic on the earth.
09:18In one indigenous community in Ontario, Nestle took so much water that the residents no longer had any coming from their taps.
09:24In California, the company has allegedly extracted water during droughts, leaving some sources dry.
09:29Poland Spring, previously a subsidiary of Nestle, has been accused of depleting water sources in Maine and misleading customers about the source of its water.
09:37The lawsuit accuses Nestle, which owns Poland Spring, of falsely labeling and selling water as spring water.
09:44The plaintiffs from eight states, including Maine, say Poland Spring does not meet the definition of spring water.
09:54First, a new tack in the battle over climate change, going after energy companies for alleged financial fraud.
10:01Ranked by researchers as one of the biggest contributors to releasing greenhouse gases globally,
10:05oil and gas company ExxonMobil could have been making plans to address this.
10:09Instead, they hid the effects of climate change for decades.
10:12We have seen a string of lawsuits targeting the fossil fuel companies.
10:16Some of the plaintiffs making the argument that was so successful in suits against the tobacco industry,
10:20basically, that the companies knew the threat posed by their products, but misled the public.
10:26As far back as 1977, employees expressed concerns to management that burning fossil fuels was likely leading to climate change.
10:32As well as conducting their own research, ExxonMobil began funding groups that denied climate change.
10:37From 1998 to 2004, they gave $16 million to groups who argued against its severity.
10:43It wasn't until 2014 that ExxonMobil changed its stance on the crisis.
10:47Researchers have claimed that the oil giant ExxonMobil accurately forecast how burning fossil fuels would cause the planet to warm,
10:56going as far back as the 1970s.
10:59Now, that's based on a new study by scientists at Harvard University and the Potsdam Institute of Climate Change.
11:06However, that didn't stop governmental bodies and people from suing ExxonMobil for hiding its knowledge of climate change and rallying against it.
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11:291. Emissions Scandal – Volkswagen Group
11:43In 2015, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced German car manufacturer Volkswagen had violated the Clean Air Act.
11:50The company had programmed their turbocharged direct-injection diesel engines to only activate emission control during tests.
11:56The EPA recently announced that Volkswagen cheated on emissions tests,
12:00allowing almost half a million badly polluting diesel cars onto America's roads, and there are millions more of them around the world.
12:07Away from the lab, the vehicles were releasing up to 40 times the maximum allowance.
12:11This illegal feature was present in around 11 million vehicles across the globe that were made between 2009 and 2015.
12:18It's believed the increased emissions might have contributed to severe health issues and possible deaths.
12:22There are still drivers who don't know if their VW car was rigged to cheat pollution targets.
12:28By 2022, Volkswagen had paid around €30 billion in fines globally.
12:33The company's then-CEO, Martin Winterkorn, resigned after the scandal.
12:37On top of having to pay Volkswagen $14 million, he's currently awaiting a trial in Germany.
12:42What other greedy company decisions that led to catastrophe did we miss in the video?
12:46Let us know in the comments below.
12:47Are we going to just continue to be treated like cattle?
12:50Did you enjoy this video?
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