FTX was touted as THE cryptocurrency trading platform with its founder, visionary Sam Bankman Fried, promising to revolutionize the industry. This once-promising Company was on path to decentralize and democratize a highly complex investment within the crypto world but by 2022, headlines that read, “Scam of the Century”, “Bank Fraud and Conspiracy”, and “Criminal Charges” pointed to a grim future. What happened and who was to blame? Listen to Episode 56 of The Great Fail to hear the full story. Special thanks to Adweek and Acast and Jason Notte from Adweek for contributing to this episode.

The Great Fail kicks off Season 3 with one of the biggest failures of 2023 thus far, as we watched one of the nation’s largest banks unravel. Once a rising star in the tech industry, Silicon Valley Bank was a paragon for startup founders and venture capitalists reaching dizzying heights of success in 2020. So how did it go from boom to bust just a few short years after? Was it greed, mismanagement, or something more sinister? You won’t want to miss this riveting exploration of Silicon Valley Bank’s rise and fall.

Several legal cases were pending, culminating in January 2019, when a class-action lawsuit led by the Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson was filed against the multi-level marketing Company, LulaRoe. This one alleged that the founders of LulaRoe made false and deceptive representations regarding their business, inspiring thousands of optimistic entrepreneurs to invest their money into the lucrative venture– only to find themselves drowning in debt, mortgaging their homes, and depleting their life savings.

Bikram Choudhury was the founder of the wildly popular hot yoga practice that many considered to cure ailments, detoxify bodies, and change lives. At the height in 2006, there were 1,650 studios in at least 40 countries, but by 2013, a series of allegations surfaced when one by one, women stepped forward with accusations that included sexual assault, rape, and abuse against the man revered as a guru. Listen now to hear about the rise and fall of the Bikram Yoga empire on Episode 52 of The Great Fail. Special guest Dave Emerson, Founder of Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga. And shoutout to our partners at Adweek and Acast.

It was a somewhat ordinary day for David Pyott, the CEO of Allergan, back in April 2014. That is until his eyes glanced over at the TV screen in his office, where he learned that billionaire hedge fund manager and activist investor Bill Ackman was about to back the takeover of his company by way of a hostile takeover. The acquirer was none other than the infamous and controversial pharmaceutical company, ValeantPharmaceuticals.
Valeant was a Wall Street darling and one of Canada’s largest companies. So why and how did this transaction lead to Valeant's downfall only a year later? Listen to Episode 53 of The Great Fail to hear the story. Special thanks to Joe Nocera for his contributions
to this segment.

Before there was Facebook, there was MySpace, once the world’s most dominating social networking company. In the summer of 2005, one of the biggest deals in internet history made headlines when News Corp., famously known as Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, acquired MySpace for $580 million in cash. In the business realm, it seemed that with the backing of the media giant, MySpace would\ have the world at its fingertips. And to the outside, it appeared that Myspace was going to be unstoppable. Find out how MySpace got unfriended on Episode 51 of The Great Fail.

We’re doing a special episode on cryptocurrency this week and covering what occurred in May of 2022
when the world watched as one of the biggest projects imploded. Once valued at $400 billion, the project
was known as TerraUST, a stablecoin that was going to transform the crypto market and the way that
traditional payments would be made in the future. Instead, investors watched as its market value dropped
by almost 99% within 24 hours. What led to this death spiral and more importantly, what does the future
hold for crypto investors?
Our special guest Omid Malekan, Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School, will break down the
story in Episode 50 of The Great Fail.

Back in the early 2000s, the Von Dutch ubiquitous trucker hats were seen everywhere- and their line of denim brought us the classic low-rise, sometimes frayed at the hem, sometimes with tons of bling, but never without the iconic “Von Dutch” stamped logo. That uniquely distinctive font bared the cool culture Americana aesthetic. Von Dutch’s popularity was so tremendous that in 2003, the Company was raking in $33 million in sales from their jackets, denim, t-shirts, and trucker- until the brand got hit with counterfeiting. But the story of Von Dutch isn’t just about rhinestones and rip-offs, it was a story about deception, betrayal, murder, and a scandal that would serve as the epitaph of its tombstone.m Find out how it all went down in Episode 49 of The Great Fail.

Get ready to hear about the most scandalous retail pharmacy chain of all time that was Phar-Mor. We hear about companies and financial misconduct frequently–stories of cooked books and misappropriated funds are hardly rare, but often leave us questioning–how do companies manage to pull these off, and more importantly how do they get past trained professionals, auditors and investors? In this episode, our featured guest Professor Kelly Richmond Pope of DePaul University, a forensic accounting expert with a specialty in corporate crime, will explain how an accident exposed a $1 billion fraud and took down one of the nation’s largest retail chains. Listen now to Episode 48 on The Great Fail.

Carrian Group was a tale straight out of a John Grisham novel, running the gamut of corruption, human greed, fraudulent accounting and false profits spanning across countries.

Almost four decades since the collapse of this huge conglomerate, we still don’t know the full story—but what we do know is behind this catastrophic failure stood some very fascinating characters: the prime minister of Malaysia, a charismatic CEO, government officials and high-level executives.

This wide-ranging group all aligned to create a labyrinth of business dealings that would blow up into a high-profile investigation, the murder of an auditor and a mysterious drowning, eventually ending up as one of the largest bankruptcies in Hong Kong history.

Find out how it went down on Episode 46 of The Great Fail.