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Some CEOs don't just fail — they take entire companies down with them. Join us as we count down the corporate executives whose greed, incompetence, and outright fraud drove their businesses straight into the ground. From accounting scandals to audacious lies, these leaders prove that a bad boss can be a company's greatest liability.
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00:00John Regas was arrested and led into the streets of Manhattan in handcuffs.
00:04Federal authorities accused members of the Regas family of hiding debt.
00:08Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're discussing the corporate execs who drove their company
00:13straight into disaster. I have a small portfolio, but I don't really watch the stock market on a
00:18day-to-day basis. Number 20, George Shaheen, web van. You have the right to come home from work
00:25and find something good waiting for you in the fridge. Imagine inventing Instacart more than
00:3010 years before the real Instacart actually came to be. Web van could have been a billion-dollar idea
00:36if its own leadership hadn't screwed things up so badly. The company began operating in 1999,
00:43taking grocery orders online and delivering them super fast. Orders are processed by our web servers,
00:49then routed to the distribution center for fulfillment. Unlike today's grocery delivery
00:54services, web van had its own warehouses full of food instead of shopping orders from Walmart or
01:00Target. The problem is that Shaheen and other execs had no experience running a supermarket and had no
01:06idea that they ran on such small margins. Web van quickly racked up plenty of sales, but its costs
01:13were way too high, and it never turned a profit. The company folded in 2001. The web van system isn't
01:19just a convenient delivery alternative for the consumer, it's a better way of doing business.
01:24Number 19, Trevor Milton, Nikola Corporation. If you think this company sounds like a ripoff of Tesla,
01:31you're not far off. Milton founded Nikola in 2014 and pitched a concept for a semi-truck powered by
01:38natural gas, though the design was later changed to use hydrogen fuel cells. In December 2016, Nikola demoed
01:45a supposedly fully functional model, but the presentation was a lie. The truck didn't actually
01:52work. But it took years and years to get here. This isn't just a pusher like a lot of vehicles.
01:57Milton started taking orders for the vehicle anyway, but by 2020, journalists and financiers
02:02started digging into Nikola Corp. It turned out that nearly everything Milton had claimed about
02:07Nikola's trucks was a lie. Nikola shares are tumbling after a short seller called the company,
02:12quote, an intricate fraud built on dozens of lies. He was later found guilty of fraud and sentenced to
02:19four years in prison, but was pardoned by President Donald Trump after donating almost $2 million to
02:25Trump's campaign. The company's founder, Trevor Milton, was convicted of fraud in 2023 for exaggerating
02:31claims about the vehicle's performance. Number 18, Al Dunlap, Sunbeam. This scandal should be a lesson
02:38in doing your diligence before hiring a CEO. Dunlap loved closing factories and laying people off so
02:44much, he was nicknamed Chainsaw Al. Such turnarounds earned him the nickname Chainsaw Al ignited a debate
02:52on the issue of corporate responsibility. He became CEO of Sunbeam, which made small household appliances
02:58in 1996. Sales shot up in 1997, as did the company's stock price. But it was all a scam. Dunlap
03:06had been
03:06cooking the books, over-reporting Sunbeam's losses in 1996 to make its turnaround seem more impressive.
03:12He'd also engaged in illegal sales tactics with merchandisers and other shenanigans to conceal
03:18Sunbeam's financial problems. Dunlap was fired in 1998, and Sunbeam went bankrupt in 2001. It later
03:26came out that he'd also committed accounting fraud in the 70s while president of a New York paper mill.
03:31My philosophy of business, you're in business to make money for the shareholders who take all the
03:38risks. Number 17, Archie McArdle, International Harvester. Don't mess with labor unions. This
03:44farm equipment manufacturer made record profits in 1977 thanks to McArdle's aggressive cost cutting.
03:51But while he was scaling back production and laying off workers, he was taking home one of the highest
03:56salaries in the country for his CEO at the time. Employees weren't impressed. In 1979, after McArdle's
04:03$1.8 million bonus was announced, the United Auto Workers called a strike. McArdle couldn't have
04:09handled it worse. He refused to compromise, figuring they'd be forced to cave eventually. He was wrong.
04:16The strike lasted 172 days, and the union ultimately came out on top. The company, meanwhile,
04:23lost more than $600 million. McArdle was fired, and International Harvester sold off most of its
04:30assets, becoming defunct by 1985. Number 16, Denis Kozlowski, Tyco. He made $100 million a year
04:39and still decided to defraud his own company. Kozlowski became CEO of this security systems
04:44business in 1992, and under his leadership, Tyco thrived. However, during his 10 years in the role,
04:51Kozlowski was secretly funneling tens of millions of dollars into his own accounts.
04:55He illegally used company money to pay for all kinds of over-the-top purchases,
05:00like his $30 million house with a $6,000 shower curtain that the media couldn't stop talking about.
05:06Decorations for the New York apartment became classic tabloid headlines, mocking the CEO's taste
05:13and his greed. Along with Tyco CFO Mark Swartz, Kozlowski was accused of stealing more than $150
05:21million. In 2002, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office indicted Kozlowski for evading over a million
05:29dollars in sales tax, and he resigned as CEO. And unlike most ultra-wealthy people,
05:35he actually paid the price. He served over six years in prison and had to pay back every penny
05:40he earned from Tyco. Donald Trump called your behavior tacky. Tacky? Tacky from Donald Trump?
05:47From Donald Trump. Wow. Number 15, John Regas, Adelphia Communications. Regas did what Denis Kozlowski
05:55did, but he brought the whole family in on the fraud. Regas and his brother Gus founded cable
06:01TV provider Adelphia in 1952. Over the next half-century, they grew it into one of the largest
06:07providers in the country. This little town suddenly home to a Fortune 500 company, led by a CEO that
06:14owned an NHL franchise. But in 2002, investigators discovered that the Regas family had been bleeding
06:21the company dry. They'd been moving money back and forth between Adelphia and their other companies
06:26to hide the fact that they had stolen $100 million. He and his son Timothy, Adelphia's former chief
06:32financial officer, were convicted of using the company's funds like an ATM machine. They used it
06:38to buy cars, land, and other personal assets. Adelphia filed for bankruptcy, and Regas and his son
06:44Timothy went to prison. Regas was released due to health problems after serving eight years and died
06:49in 2021. One-time billionaire John Regas died yesterday at 96 years old. Number 14, Martin Shkreli,
06:57Turing Pharmaceuticals, and Kalo Bios. You remember Pharma Bro? He became the most hated man in the
07:03country after his company bought a medication that treats pneumonia associated with HIV and hiked the
07:09price 5,500%. At the end of the day, there have been much larger drug price increases by much bigger
07:15drug companies that actually, you would argue, large multi-billion dollar companies with lots of
07:20cash don't necessarily need to do something like this. Under America's broken healthcare system,
07:24that was totally legal. But his other slimy behavior was not. It turned out Shkreli was running
07:30a gigantic Ponzi scheme, starting new companies and using investor capital to pay off investors in his
07:36other companies. I intend to follow the advice of my counsel, not yours. His behavior during the trial
07:41didn't win him any favors with the judge, but his conviction gave everyone watching a huge dose of
07:46schadenfreude. He served four years in prison, and his companies, of course, went bankrupt. A jury decided
07:52that Martin Shkreli deceived investors in a pair of failed hedge funds. He was found guilty on three
07:58of eight counts. The case did focus on allegations that he blew investors' money on bad stock picks.
08:05Number 13. Sam Bankman-Fried. Alameda Research and FTX. He's not as unlikable as Shkreli, but he committed
08:12an even bigger fraud. In 2017, at just 25 years old, Bankman-Fried co-founded crypto trading firm
08:19Alameda Research. Two years later, he co-founded the crypto exchange FTX to raise capital for Alameda,
08:26but it did a lot more than that. If people say mean things about me, I can take it.
08:30Over the next three years, Bankman-Fried illegally took customers' deposits from FTX to pay Alameda's
08:36debts and fund its research. Even before the fraud was revealed, critics raised alarm bells about the
08:41close relationship between the two companies, arguing that it would never be permitted outside the
08:46unregulated crypto space. Bankman-Fried was eventually convicted of fraud and money laundering
08:51and sentenced to 25 years. This morning, Sam Bankman-Fried's regret. Three days after he was
08:57sentenced to 25 years in federal prison, the man behind one of the biggest financial frauds in
09:01American history told ABC News he never intended to hurt anyone or take anyone's money. Number 12.
09:08Richard Fould. Lehman Brothers. He didn't cause the housing market crash that led to Lehman's collapse,
09:14but he's a major reason the 158-year-old bank never recovered. Fould poured Lehman's money into
09:20subprime mortgages, those loans that created the bubble that popped in 2008. Did we do everything
09:25right? We clearly did not. A senior trader at the company later reported that Fould ignored
09:31advisors' warnings that the market was unstable, and even banished Lehman's chief risk officer from
09:37meetings. Immediately after the crash, Lehman lost billions, and Fould desperately tried to find a
09:42buyer for the firm to prevent it from going bankrupt. Lehman Brothers, a 158-year-old firm,
09:48filed for bankruptcy. I don't think anyone really expected a bank as big as Lehman to, you know,
09:53be in a position that it's in now. Yet he declined offers that could have saved it because he felt
09:58they
09:58weren't good enough. Lehman did go bankrupt, but Fould had already been paid more than $400 million
10:04over the previous seven years. What about Dick Fould specifically at Lehman Brothers?
10:10Well, I think he will go down as a pretty defective executive.
10:13Number 11, Gerald Ratner, Ratner Group. It's one thing to sell cheaply made products.
10:18It's another to admit in public that your products are junk.
10:21We even sell a pair of earrings for under a pound. Gold earrings as well. And some people say,
10:30well, that's cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks and Spencer's. But I have to say,
10:36the sandwich will probably last longer than the earrings.
10:39Ratner inherited a group of family-run jewelry stores, which he successfully grew into a massive
10:44chain by offering major discounts. But while giving a speech to an entrepreneur's association in 1991,
10:50he made a fatal mistake that killed the company. Ratner joked about his jewelry's quality,
10:56calling it, quote, total crap, and implying that it would fall apart quickly.
11:00And it's really only cost £4.95. People say to me, how can you sell this for such a low
11:08price?
11:09I say, because it's total crap. His remarks made headlines the next day,
11:14and Ratner Group lost £500 million in a matter of days. Ratner was fired the following year,
11:20and the company later changed its name to Signet Group.
11:23It was an absolutely unmitigating disaster.
11:26Number 10, Carly Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard.
11:29I led Hewlett-Packard through a very difficult time, the worst technology recession in 25 years.
11:35Good morning, everybody.
11:37Then she launched a single massive deal, and she's been playing defense ever since.
11:43It was a terrible deal, and it really led to the destruction of the company.
11:47So, what was this deal?
11:49Fiorina's aggressive pursuit of a bold vision arguably eroded the very foundations of a tech giant.
11:55Her tenure at IT behemoth Hewlett-Packard, from 1999 to 2005, was defined by her controversial
12:02acquisition of Compaq, a move she championed as essential for HP's future relevance.
12:07Despite fierce internal and external opposition, the deal went through,
12:11but the promised synergies and market dominance largely failed to materialize.
12:15Profits plummeted, and even when they started rising again, they lagged well behind competitors.
12:20HP's stock value dropped by half.
12:2330,000 workers were laid off, and less than six years after she took control, Fiorina was fired.
12:30Wall Street had so little faith in her that on news of her dismissal, HP's stock jumped up 7%.
12:37Instead, the merger proved deeply unpopular, led to widespread layoffs, and created significant
12:43cultural friction, ultimately diluting HP's competitive edge, and resulting in a period
12:47of underperformance that culminated in her forced resignation.
12:51Two facts here.
12:52Why did HP's board fire you, and why on the day that they did, the stock went up nearly 7
12:58%?
12:59Well, they did fire me.
13:01I've been very open about that.
13:02I was fired in a boardroom brawl.
13:04We had board members who were leaking information out of the boardroom.
13:08You know, the truth is this.
13:09It is a leader's job to challenge the status quo.
13:12Number 9.
13:12Fred Goodwin, Royal Bank of Scotland.
13:15He was known as Fred the Shred as he led the Royal Bank of Scotland through acquisitions
13:18and job cuts to the brink of disaster.
13:21This evening, the knighthood he was awarded for services to banking was unceremoniously withdrawn
13:26by a previously obscure body known as the Forfeiture Committee.
13:29Across the pond in the world of high finance, Fred Goodwin took the Royal Bank of Scotland
13:34on what could only be described as a ride off a cliff.
13:38Goodwin's aggressive expansion spree, especially during his disastrous acquisition of ABN AMRO
13:43at the peak of the 2008 bubble, left RBS reeling with debt and overexposure right as
13:49the global financial crisis hit.
13:51Fred Goodwin compounded his sins in the public eye by fighting for a time to hold on to 8 million
13:56pounds in pension payouts.
13:58My pension is the same as everyone else in the bank.
14:01Losing his knighthood is the final insult for a man who used to have the ear of prime
14:06ministers and for years basked in the praise of politicians, even royalty.
14:11The fallout was so devastating it required a government bailout and saw RBS post the largest
14:16loss in UK corporate history.
14:18He was even stripped of his knighthood, a rare and public shaming for a failed banking boss.
14:23Well, this has been an independent decision by an important committee of civil servants
14:30and obviously signed off by the Queen.
14:32But RBS came to symbolize everything that went wrong in the British economy over the last
14:37decade.
14:38And under Fred Goodwin, that's when it happened.
14:41And I think it's appropriate, therefore, that he loses his knighthood.
14:44Number eight, Marissa Meyer, Yahoo.
14:47Big news in the tech world today, Google's Marissa Meyer defecting to take the top spot
14:52at Yahoo, the CEO job.
14:54It surprised a lot of people, pretty much everybody, because Meyer was very big at Google.
14:58She was the 20th employee there and she was its first female engineer.
15:03When it comes to tech icons, Yahoo was once a titan until Marissa Meyer hopped into the driver's
15:08seat.
15:08Hired as a turnaround CEO, Meyer's tenure was marked by expensive acquisitions like the
15:14$1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr, which failed to deliver anything close to the expected return.
15:20She also invested heavily in redesigns and new features that failed to recapture the magic
15:25of Yahoo's glory days.
15:27I think that, you know, it's very important for us to look at what generates the most value
15:32and the most opportunity for the company.
15:33And when you look at this transaction that Verizon's proposed, it recognizes a huge amount
15:41of value.
15:41And that's what our process was really designed to recognize.
15:45The companies struggled to innovate, couldn't adapt quickly enough to the mobile revolution
15:49and continued to see its core advertising business erode, eventually leading to the sale
15:54of its core internet operations to Verizon for a fraction of its former valuation.
15:59Yahoo announcing CEO Marissa Meyer will step down from the board.
16:02Once the Verizon deal is completed, five other directors, including co-founder David Filo,
16:08will also step down.
16:09Following the nearly $5 billion sale of its core internet business, Yahoo will change its
16:14name to Altaba, which is a combination of the words alternate and Alibaba.
16:19Number seven, Eddie Lampert, Sears Holdings.
16:22Big bankruptcy news of the morning.
16:24Sears Holdings, parent company of Sears and Kmart, filing for Chapter 11 earlier this morning,
16:28succumbing to a mountain of debt and failure to adapt to a changing retail landscape.
16:33Sears faced a $134 million debt payment that was supposed to be due today.
16:38The company reached to deal with its creditors to keep most of its operations running.
16:41That's for now.
16:42Sears was once America's go-to department store, so its slow-motion collapse is nothing short
16:47of tragic, largely thanks to the leadership philosophy of Eddie Lampert.
16:51Lampert's control of Sears and Kmart from 2005 onward saw him prioritize cost-cutting
16:57and asset sales over investment in the stores themselves.
17:01Instead of modernizing aging infrastructure or adapting to the rise of e-commerce, Lampert
17:06treated the companies as a portfolio of assets to be stripped, selling off valuable real
17:11estate and brands like craftsmen.
17:13This systematic underinvestment alienated customers, demoralized employees, and left the stores
17:18increasingly irrelevant, leading to decades of decline and ultimately the bankruptcy and
17:23near-total disappearance of both once-beloved brands.
17:26I remember when Eddie Lampert was A on the cover of Business Week magazine as the next Warren
17:32Buffett.
17:32I remember going to meet with him when Sears merged with Kmart.
17:36The morning that Sears merged with Kmart and we all thought this was, or that he was
17:40a genius, he had some plan.
17:42No, but this is what, at the time, you should go back and look at the stories, the headlines.
17:46It was extraordinary.
17:47Number six, Bernard Ebers, WorldCom.
17:50Hi, David.
17:50As you well know, in his prime, Bernie Ebers was known as the telecom cowboy, a former high
17:56school basketball coach who cobbled together a company that ultimately helped lay the foundation
18:02for the internet as we know it.
18:04But it was all built on a massive brazen fraud.
18:07Ebers presided over one of the most jaw-dropping downfalls in corporate history.
18:11The charismatic CEO of WorldCom spearheaded the rapid expansion of the telecommunications
18:16giant through aggressive acquisitions throughout the 1990s.
18:20However, when the tech bubble burst and growth stalled, Ebers and his executives resorted to
18:25a massive scheme to falsely inflate company assets by nearly $11 billion.
18:30This elaborate deception masked the company's financial struggles, artificially boosting
18:35its stock price and deceiving investors.
18:38Misleading regulators as well as investors on the health of the company and overinflated
18:45a lot of the company's numbers and profits and that sort of thing.
18:50And he was caught.
18:50Despite being only halfway through his sentence, Ebers' family and their attorneys argued now
18:55at age 78, being in prison had taken major tolls on the man's health.
18:59When the fraud was uncovered in 2002, WorldCom promptly collapsed into bankruptcy, costing
19:04shareholders billions and thousands of employees their jobs and pensions.
19:08The scandal cemented Ebers' legacy as a CEO who played fast and loose with the truth.
19:14More on that breaking news, we force reported at 10 o'clock tonight, former WorldCom CEO Bernie
19:19Ebers has died.
19:20A family attorney confirmed that with 16 WAPT tonight, his family releasing a statement
19:26detailing his passing and thanking supporters.
19:29He was released from prison last year in December, having served 13 years of a 25-year sentence.
19:35Number five, John Scully, Apple Inc.
19:38He's the man who was supposed to be better than Steve Jobs.
19:41Now, more than 25 years after taking the helmet, Apple, John Scully is saying it was all a big
19:48mistake, that Jobs would have saved Apple from a near-death experience.
19:53Scully's case is perhaps one of the most infamous examples of a CEO leading the company astray
19:58immediately after its visionary founder's departure.
20:01Scully, brought in from PepsiCo by Steve Jobs himself, famously ousted Jobs from Apple in 1985.
20:07They said, Steve, we want your assurance that you're not going to leave Apple and take
20:11other people with us.
20:12We've heard rumors of that.
20:13And he said, no, absolutely not.
20:15And then the next day, Steve took five key managers and the board fired him.
20:21What followed was a decade where Apple, despite some innovative products, lost its way.
20:26The company suffered from bloated product lines, high prices, a confusing brand identity, and
20:31a failure to license its operating system effectively, allowing Microsoft to dominate the burgeoning
20:36PC market.
20:37By the 1990s, Apple was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, bleeding market share and relevance
20:43until Jobs' triumphant return in 1997 pulled it back from the abyss.
20:47I think they made the wrong choice.
20:49You know, they should have chosen Steve.
20:51The talent that Steve has is so extraordinary.
20:55We should have figured out how to work with it.
20:57If Jobs had come back even six months later, Scully says Apple would have been gone.
21:02Quote, absolutely gone.
21:05He also says Jobs won't talk to him anymore.
21:08Number four, Martin Winterkorn, Volkswagen.
21:11Please welcome chairman of the board, Volkswagen Group, Professor Dr. Martin Winterkorn.
21:17Not any longer, Martin Winterkorn has quit as CEO of German carmaker Volkswagen amid the spiraling
21:25scandal over its rigging of diesel car emissions tests in the United States.
21:30Few corporate scandals have shifted global conversations like the Volkswagen emissions
21:35scandal, and much of the fallout falls at the feet of Martin Winterkorn.
21:39Winterkorn, the long-serving chairman of Volkswagen, was at the helm when the Dieselgate scandal erupted
21:44in 2015.
21:46The supervisory board said we'd like to clearly state that Mr. Winterkorn was not aware of the
21:51manipulation of emissions and that we have the greatest respect for his willingness to send
21:56a very clear signal and take responsibility in this difficult situation for Volkswagen.
22:01It was revealed that VW had deliberately installed defeat devices in millions of its diesel vehicles
22:07to cheat on emissions tests, making them appear far cleaner than they actually were.
22:11This systemic deception, driven by a corporate culture that prioritized market dominance above
22:16all else, led to Winterkorn's resignation.
22:19Massive fines exceeding tens of billions of dollars, and a profound erosion of trust in
22:24the brand that continues to reverberate across the automotive industry.
22:28He denied any involvement in decisions to install the so-called defeat devices that made harmful
22:33diesel emissions seem cleaner than they were.
22:36Winterkorn faces a fine or a custodial sentence if found guilty.
22:41Number three, Adam Neumann, WeWork.
22:43Even though WeWork is 50 square foot per person, a third of all WeWork spaces are actually open
22:48common spaces that give access to everybody that we don't measure as seats.
22:53So there's a lot more room there.
22:54So the way we do it is people think that WeWork is all open.
22:57It's not true.
22:5890% of WeWork space is actually office.
23:0110% is only open space.
23:02But we create a lot of common space for everybody.
23:05A flamboyant founder whose unchecked ambition and chaotic leadership style nearly imploded on
23:10a multi-billion dollar startup, Neumann co-founded WeWork with a vision to revolutionize office
23:15spaces.
23:16However, his tenure became synonymous with extravagant spending, questionable self-dealings,
23:21and a cult-like corporate culture.
23:23There was an interesting piece in the New York Times over the weekend titled Adam Neumann
23:26and the Art of Failing Up.
23:28The report detailed how Adam Neumann was able to create and build WeWork, fail spectacularly
23:34at an attempt to go public, and still walk away with a potential billion-dollar payday.
23:38It cites his ability to read people, his persuasive charisma, and his taste for risk.
23:43From lavish parties to personal use of company jets and selling trademark rights to WeWork
23:48itself, Neumann's financial impropriety and erratic management were legendary.
23:53The culmination was a disastrous attempt at an IPO in 2019, which exposed the company's
23:59massive losses and unsustainable business model, sending its valuation plummeting from
24:04$47 billion to under $10 billion in weeks, and nearly bankrupting the entire enterprise.
24:10What would it take for Mark to buy this IPO?
24:12Oh, I'm not buying it.
24:13No way.
24:14So, I've got an issue with the business model in general, right?
24:17So you've got a company that's signing all of these long-term leases, and then they're
24:21subleasing to little, you know, small businesses, maybe one-employee kind of companies, on very
24:29short-term leases.
24:30Number two, Jeffrey Skilling, Enron.
24:32Developing right now, the former CEO of Enron has just been released from federal custody.
24:37Jeff Skilling, now 65 years old, was released after spending 12 years in prison for his
24:42role in one of the most high-profile corporate and financial fraud cases in American history.
24:47While Skilling was the CEO in charge, the most infamous corporate scandal of the early
24:5221st century was engineered by two men at the pinnacle of power.
24:56Skilling and Kenneth Lay, the founder and chairman, spearheaded Enron's transformation into a
25:01massive energy trading and services company.
25:04However, beneath the veneer of innovation lay a complex web of elaborate accounting fraud,
25:09including the use of special-purpose entities to hide massive debts and inflate earnings.
25:14You're the only financial institution that can't produce a balance sheet or a cash flow
25:18statement with their earnings.
25:23Well, thank you very much.
25:25We appreciate it.
25:26Their deceptive practices created a false perception of profitability, attracting vast
25:31investments.
25:32When the House of Cards inevitably collapsed in late 2001, Enron filed for bankruptcy,
25:37erasing billions in shareholder value, destroying thousands of jobs, and sparking a national
25:42crisis of corporate governance.
25:44Jeff Skilling was the poster boy for all that was wrong with big corporations and corporate
25:49greed.
25:49Brian Weiss is Channel 2's legal analyst and covered Skilling's trial.
25:53Putting Jeff Skilling in the penitentiary for as long as we did didn't bring back any of
25:59the funds that these people lost, and they were never really made whole.
26:02Number one, Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos.
26:04This Theranos blood test put my cholesterol at 170.
26:08My own doctor found it to be 169 just the week before.
26:12Holmes says she wants to make this sort of testing available anywhere, anytime.
26:16There's no reason why these can't be distributed in very, very decentralized locations.
26:24The story of this health tech corporation is one of audacious fraud, built on the promise
26:29of revolutionary technology that never existed.
26:33Elizabeth Holmes, the company's charismatic founder, captivated investors and the public
26:37with claims that her company could perform hundreds of medical tests from just a few
26:42drops of blood, using a proprietary device called the Edison.
26:45She amassed billions in funding, built a powerful board, and was hailed as a Silicon Valley prodigy.
26:51There's this man who goes by the initials RC right now in Arizona, who is suggesting that
26:58the lab results that he got from Theranos were not accurate, and it led to him having a heart attack.
27:04Her elaborate deception unraveled spectacularly, leading to the complete dissolution of Theranos
27:09and her subsequent conviction for criminal fraud, marking one of the most stunning corporate
27:13downfalls in modern history.
27:15Well, she is one of 655 inmates at this so-called club fed, about 100 miles outside of Houston
27:22where she grew up.
27:23She'll have absolutely no privacy.
27:26She'll be wearing a khaki uniform.
27:28She will spend her first 90 days working in the kitchen, as we mentioned, making 12 to
27:3240 cents an hour.
27:33After that, she will work as a groundskeeper or a janitor at the facility.
27:38Which of these CEOs do you think made the dumbest decisions?
27:41Let us know in the comments.
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