- 6 weeks ago
From corporate predators to financial fraudsters, these individuals amassed wealth through questionable means while others suffered. Join us as we examine the most notorious examples of excess and exploitation in modern times! We'll explore how their pursuit of wealth led to scandals, criminal charges, and widespread harm to employees, customers, and society.
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00:00It's not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me.
00:03And, you know, I started off in Brooklyn.
00:05My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, where today we'll be looking at the greediest individuals of the century so far.
00:12Am I evil? No, no, no.
00:14I, um, I, uh, I think I'm the opposite of evil.
00:20Number 10, Jim McNerney.
00:22I'm Jim McNerney from the Boeing Company, and we are proud to be a part of this year's report.
00:27From 2005 to 2015, Jim McNerney was Boeing's CEO.
00:32His leadership was highly controversial, especially since he was earning over $23 million annually at one point.
00:38Many criticized his huge paychecks, especially since Boeing was laying off thousands of workers, alongside freezing pensions.
00:44Many analysts believe McNerney prioritized cost-cutting over quality and safety, which likely set the stage for the Boeing 737 MAX crisis.
00:52What I'd like to do is just hijack this moment and perhaps soften up the interview a little bit in so doing.
01:00Although it happened after his departure, the company's development philosophy began with him.
01:04This means during his tenure, the company seemed more interested in making money and beating Airbus rather than making their planes safe.
01:10For many decades, we at Boeing have challenged ourselves to make our products, services, and operations ever more environmentally progressive.
01:20Number 9, Larry Ellison.
01:21He's the samurai warrior of Silicon Valley.
01:25Larry's attitude is, if you want to compete against me, then be prepared to be crushed.
01:29Oracle Corporation is a tech company founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, who was CEO until stepping down in 2014.
01:37As of 2025, he's one of the top three richest people alive, with over $250 billion to his name.
01:43He's so obscenely wealthy, he owns 98% of an island in Hawaii.
01:47This means the majority of residents are economically dependent on one person, a dynamic resembling feudal systems.
01:53Tell me how you did.
01:55Well, I think my favorite line is, I had all the disadvantages necessary for success.
02:00Under his leadership, Oracle launched one of the most hostile takeovers in history against PeopleSoft.
02:05Despite his absurd wealth, Ellison has given relatively little to charity, especially compared to figures like Bill Gates.
02:11I think if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger.
02:14So I've always been very ambitious.
02:17I've always been very curious.
02:19Number 8, Mark Zuckerberg.
02:20Are the allegations true that you're secretly a lizard?
02:24Um, I'm gonna have to go with no on that.
02:27I am not a lizard.
02:29The man who co-founded Facebook and Meta has become a symbol of modern tech greed.
02:33One of his most controversial decisions was to extract and sell data of Facebook users, prioritizing profit over privacy.
02:39This led to the Cambridge Analytica data scandal in the 2010s, where roughly 87 million Facebook profiles had their data harvested.
02:46Your user agreement sucks.
02:49Facebook is also known for amplifying things like hate speech, fake news, and even ethnic violence in places like Myanmar.
03:02Zuckerberg and his underlings resist correcting these issues since such algorithms are good for engagement and revenue.
03:08Zuckerberg even has his own private $100 million compound in Hawaii.
03:12This past January, Zuckerberg expanded his estate to more than 2,000 acres.
03:17Number 7, Jeff Bezos.
03:19Every time I look at something, it looks like it could be improved.
03:22Amazon has exercised monopoly-like power for years.
03:26At the helm is Jeff Bezos, who was the wealthiest man alive from 2017 to 2021.
03:31Unfortunately, most of his workers are way less wealthy than he is.
03:34Amazon has frequently been accused of mistreating its workers.
03:37Working in an Amazon warehouse is an exceedingly difficult job, where your bathroom breaks are timed and you're held to absurdly high standards.
03:44Because of the way that they set their rates for productivity, it's a lot harder work physically but also psychologically.
03:52When workers have tried to unionize to improve conditions, Amazon has often cracked down and tried its best to stall these efforts.
03:58On top of all that, the company has frequently avoided paying taxes in countries like the UK, despite having an annual revenue in the hundreds of billions.
04:06You have security cameras right behind you at all times that are looking at you 24-7.
04:12And if you don't meet standards or their rates, you're out the door. You're just disposable.
04:19Number 6, Jeffrey Skilling.
04:21Jeff Skilling was the poster boy for all that was wrong with big corporations and corporate greed.
04:26The Enron scandal is one of recent history's most infamous cases of financial fraud.
04:30Its primary architect was Jeffrey Skilling, former CEO of Enron Corporation, which was founded in 1985.
04:37The energy company declared bankruptcy in 2001 after years of corrupt practices.
04:42Under Skilling's rule, they encouraged a system that rewarded deception and harshly punished whistleblowers.
04:47Skilling made millions selling his shares just months before they declared bankruptcy, suspiciously due to personal reasons.
04:53I can just say it again. On the date I left, I absolutely, unequivocally thought the company was in good shape.
05:02When legal action was taken, Skilling claimed he had no idea the fraudulent practices were taking place, despite being considered the main instigator.
05:09In the end, he was put in jail in 2006, where he stayed for 13 years.
05:13Jeffrey Skilling, now a free man, after spending more than a decade in federal custody.
05:17Number 5, Bernie Madoff.
05:18The mastermind of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.
05:22The largest Ponzi scheme in history is worth an estimated $65 billion.
05:26Of course, to do a crime like that, you'd have to be extremely greedy, which is exactly what Bernie Madoff was.
05:31According to him, he began the scheme in the 90s, but some witnesses claim it started two decades earlier.
05:36It relied on promising reliable returns to investors, which worked by paying old investors with new ones.
05:41This meant they weren't making profits, they were just stealing investments.
05:44We lost 95% of what we had.
05:47I think what he did is despicable.
05:49He sold his soul for the buck.
05:51When the scandal was revealed, Madoff was tried and sentenced to 150 years in prison.
05:57Unsurprisingly, he didn't live out the whole sentence and died in prison in 2021.
06:01Number 4, Sam Bankman-Fried.
06:04In just the past five years, Sam Bankman-Fried went from buying his first Bitcoin to becoming a multi-billionaire.
06:10Given cryptocurrency's decentralized nature, it's no surprise that it's often used for shady things.
06:15One of the biggest crypto criminals was Bankman-Fried, who founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
06:20In 2022, the company went bankrupt when it was revealed that Bankman-Fried had stolen billions from customers.
06:26In 2023, he was tried for his crimes and convicted on seven charges of fraud and conspiracy.
06:31They sentenced him to 25 years behind bars where he currently remains.
06:34Former crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried is forfeiting $11 billion in assets as he begins a 25-year prison sentence for fraud.
06:42It's especially ironic when you learn he supposedly believed in effective altruism.
06:46In hindsight, this was essentially weaponizing morality to take heat off his back, which didn't work in the end.
06:51Number 3, Martin Shkreli.
06:53On the advice of counsel, I invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and respectfully decline to answer your question.
06:59For a brief period, Martin Shkreli was the Internet's number one enemy.
07:02As CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, he bumped up the price of the drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill.
07:10This is an essential medicine to a lot of people, so he was sacrificing the lives of the sick and poor to fatten his wallet.
07:16Am I evil? No, no, no. I, um, I, uh, I think I'm the opposite of evil.
07:22Two years later, he was convicted of fraud and conspiracy, then sentenced to seven years in prison.
07:27In 2022, he was released early, but he's now banned from ever serving as an officer of a publicly traded company.
07:33Another controversy of his was buying the only copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album, then taunting the public with it.
07:40Number 2, Elon Musk.
07:47If you're the richest person in the world, then you're instantly considered greedy,
07:50since no one realistically needs that much money.
07:53Since 2021, Elon Musk has been that person.
07:56He has a net worth of over $400 billion.
07:59He's not exactly the most supportive boss for his workers, proclaiming himself anti-union.
08:03They attack you a lot.
08:04They do.
08:06And you seem to laugh it off.
08:09According to the National Labor Relations Board, his retaliation against workers violates labor laws.
08:15When he took over Twitter, he unjustly fired 80% of its staff.
08:19Musk is also entirely convinced he's a self-made man, despite coming from an already wealthy family from South Africa.
08:34Musk was also briefly in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency,
08:38where he implemented immense cuts to government services.
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08:56Number 1, Donald Trump.
08:58If Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her.
09:01Stop it!
09:02Oh, it's so weird!
09:03Stop it!
09:04You know what?
09:04America's 45th and 47th president considers himself a self-made man.
09:09Evidence against this includes Trump's famous quote that his father gave him a...
09:13Small loan of a million dollars.
09:14His business endeavors haven't always been successful, resulting in multiple bankruptcies.
09:19He's walked away relatively unscathed from all of these while workers were left to struggle.
09:23Trump also ran the Trump University scam, which was the subject of three lawsuits alleging fraud.
09:28He paid $25 million to settle those cases in 2016.
09:32As president, he's also routed government and foreign spending to his own properties, raising his profits even further.
09:37Just put this in perspective, you said it hasn't been easy for you, but my dad gave me a million dollar loan.
09:42That probably is going to seem pretty easy to a lot of people.
09:45If you had as much money as the people on this list, what would you do with it?
09:48Let us know in the comments.
09:49If you can't afford my medicine, you know where to find me.
09:52I'll be online, I'll be on Twitter.
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