Bre-X claimed to have found one of the largest gold deposits ever, deep in the Indonesian jungle, and was briefly worth about $6 billion. The core samples had been salted with gold dust; as the fraud unraveled in 1997, the project’s chief geologist fell to his death from a helicopter.

Bernie Madoff’s clients believed they held about $65 billion — the number printed on their statements. Almost none of it was real: he ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history, and in 2009 was sentenced to 150 years in prison.

When Enron collapsed into bankruptcy in December 2001, it took its auditor down with it: Arthur Andersen, one of the world’s five largest accounting firms, was convicted of obstruction and effectively ceased to exist — even though the Supreme Court later overturned the conviction.

Tyco’s CEO Dennis Kozlowski was convicted in 2005 of looting more than $600 million from the company. The spending that made him infamous: a $6,000 shower curtain and a $2 million birthday party in Sardinia, half of it billed to Tyco.