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.
Arbitrageur Ivan Boesky paid a $100 million penalty in 1986 for insider trading — the largest ever at the time. Months earlier he had told a graduating class that “greed is healthy,” the line that inspired Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good.”