The scandal and inaccurate representation of the company caused the company stock to fall from $79.73 a share in June 2020 to $20.74 in January 2021. The company provided a myriad of reasons why withdrawal requests couldnt be processed. WaitWells Fargo is a top business scandal of 2020? The biggest business scandals of 2020 | Fortune The #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo movements have exploded in recent years, shedding light on systemic racial and gender bias across American society, and in particular, within American workplaces. That's resulted in a wave of cash moving into highly regarded and trusted stocks whose share prices have then outstripped those of their peer group. It also issued a comprehensive report about how the hack had occurred. US government fines Wells Fargo $3 billion for its 'staggering - CNN 2. Then came the accusations of fraud. Responding To Employee Social Media Behavior, The question of how to respond to employees' social media behavior outside of work is a difficult one. This is a difficult choice to make and one with significant impact on different people. Hardly. Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on, Easterbrook said at the time in an email to employees. To that end, Fortunes editors have rounded up the 10 strangest, juiciest, most out-there business scandals of the year. GM took its sweet time wiping the egg off its face, waiting until late November to announce that it would effectively back out of the deal. Geoff Colvin. A criminal investigation found ongoing internal animosity at eBay toward the bloggers, who sometimes had been critical of eBay in their coverage. Now, the finger-pointing begins. 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In the intervening years the scandal got bigger, not smaller. Compliance Week is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, there were more than 21,000 filed charges of sex discrimination in fiscal year 2020, up by more than 31% from 2019. However, customers quickly started realizing their requests to withdraw their money was not granted. Its always financially beneficial in the long term to do the right thing. Matters came to a head last June whenWirecard announced that 1.9 billion euros (about $2.1 billion) was missing. Braun quickly resigned. Geoff Colvin. The parallel scandal is the failure of regulators and auditors to spot the looming disaster despite years of warning signs. When the much-hyped but critically panned . LuckinCoffeethe China-based equivalent of Starbucks in the United Statesand China-based video streaming companyiQIYIare two different companies in two separate industries, but the scams that each allegedly operated share the same detrimental impact on the U.S. accounting and auditing profession. Bruce Dorris, a former prosecutor who is president of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, says, When you look at the magnitude of what happened, this is the Enron of Germany.. If the food isn't cooked right, send it back. The strategy worked well, for a while. Alameda officials seemingly caved in to Musks libertarian defiance, announcing on May 13 that it would approve Teslas plan to reopen the plantafter Tesla already had done so. Apple, Pfizer among new additions to ethical company list. As one of Chinas youngest, hottest so-called unicorn startups, Beijing-based Luckin pitched itself as a tech company rather than a glorified barista biz. In addition to the numerous investigationsWirecarditself is facing, EY is alsotaking heat for failing to uncover the fraud sooner. Instances of PPP fraud are legion and continue to pile up, from thefake Florida ministrythat allegedly received more than $8 million in government funds to the Texas man who allegedly pourednearly $1 millionof PPP money into cryptocurrency. So much so that the 2016 promotional video was actually filmed as the Nikola freight truck was rolling downhill, rather than solely under its own power. And those are just the main developments of 2020. After four years, this epic scandal is still far from over. Luckin Coffee #3. Aided by an exGreen Beret, he hid in a box designed to transport stereo equipment and was shuttled onto a private plane that flew to Istanbul, then transferred to a smaller plane that took him to Beirut (a country where he has a home and would face no extradition to Japan). With all the news media focused on the pandemic, many of the significant company scandals of 2020 were overlooked. The Top Companies Sued Over Discrimination and Harassment in 2020 The bank discovered it had created 3.5 million fake accounts, not 2 million. So, until it demonstrates otherwise, the EPA should rightly change its name to the Environmental Destruction Agency. By May 2019, it raised $561 million at a $4.2 billion valuation going public on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Humans are the first line of defense. Aaron Pressman. However, the people who got you to where you are today are not necessarily the ones who are going to get you to where you need to go in the future. as well as other partner offers and accept our, Jeremy Moeller, Chesnot, and Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, Ian Tuttle/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize, Hakan Nural/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images, Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. made a string of misrepresentations of its technology, werent able to get the money they needed, boarded a bullet train from his home in Tokyo. In addition, the phrases unprecedented times and social distancing were used far more than we ever thought they would. For more. Wirecardis to Germany what Enron was to the United States: Anaccounting fraud and oversight failure so epic in its scope and scale that its aftermath will forever alter the countrys auditing and accounting profession as it exists today. The litigation is ongoing, but what is clear is in its attempts to distance itself from the behavior of its former CEO, McDonalds is willing to publicly air its dirty laundry in a way rarely seen in corporate America. It's sometimes hard to draw the line. The Trump administration, for its part,points to the programs successesin allocating more than $520 billion to roughly 5.2 million American businesses, enabling many to save jobs and keep workers on their payroll during a time of severe economic distress. New allegations point to PG&E being at fault for one of the recent wildfires in California: Equipment from the embattled utility issuspected in the Sept. 27 Zogg Fire in Shasta County north of Sacramento, which would be the latest in a list of such catastrophes spanning decades. However, their security holes were quickly discovered as meetings were infiltrated by spammers streaming offensive content for all to see. That included a 2016 promotional video that purported to show an operational Nikola freight truck but was in fact staged by rolling the truck down a long hill. - Matt Wilson, Under30Experiences, 7. Ultimately, the payment processing company filed for insolvency just three days afteracknowledging a prevailing likelihood that it fraudulently booked $2 billion in assets.