Al Lewis
AUTHOR OF BUSINESS BLUNDERS
A long-time financial journalist who has seen enough.
Business Blunders
A Newsletter about the Biggest Missteps in Business
“It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.” – Warren Buffett
Business is great, until somebody blows it.
Subscribe free or paid to a newsletter that tracks the ethical lapses, frauds and critical errors in judgment that continue to plague the financial world.
Business Blunders, as you will read, are both tragic and comic, and never seem to stop repeating themselves.
Here's what you'll find at businessblunders.com
- Slipping Away From Prosecutors The Volkswagen CEO who lorded over "Dieselgate" defers consequences with a happy accident
- 15 Tales Of Lost Ponzi Riches Swindlers can steal billions because investors won't learn from history. Here's a ranking of America's top Ponzi schemers.
- Hello, I Love You This Week In Blunders – June 22-28
- Milk It Like Milken Terren Peizer ratted out the junk bond king in the 1980s. Now he's headed to prison for insider trading.
- Hey, Pig. The Feds Found Your Crypto This Week In Blunders - June 15 - 21
- The Outrageous Acts Of Criminally Charged Corporations How crooked is Big Business? Check out the rap sheet
- Musk Chickens Out To TACO This Week In Blunders - June 8-14
- Silicon Valley Sex Farm OneTaste executives face prison time for a forced labor scheme
- Care Fakers This Week In Blunders - June 1-7
- Trophy Blonde A 'Real Housewives' husband purchased fame for his younger bride. Now he's 86, claiming dementia, and heading to prison
- Chrisley Knows Bunk This Week In Blunders – May 25-31
- If You Like Data Colada … Harvard proves business ethics are baloney
- CEOs Say The Dumbest Things Here's a list of top executives who exposed how self-absorbed, out-of-touch and wrong they can be
- Eat More Crypto This Week In Blunders – May 18-24
- Not Your Money A New York Real Estate mogul learns a valuable lesson about other people's money
- UnitedHealth Scare This Week In Blunders - May 11-17
- The $100 Million Pastrami Stock manipulators pulled off a remarkable fraud. Now they're toast.
- Behind Business Blunders In a rare podcast appearance, hosts want to know who is the intended audience for Business Blunders, and what is my goal for this publication? Like I know?
- ‘Banks Are Not Your Friends’ This Week In Blunders – May 4-10
- Day Trader Plea Deal Ian G. Bell pleads guilty in hopes of reducing prison time
- Lost In Love Top CEOs who kissed away their jobs
- Copy, Paste And Profit This Week In Blunders – April 27-May 3
- Million-Dollar Baby Kohl's fired CEO Ashley Buchanan for allegedly steering business to his romantic partnerStop And Steal A Brinks truck spilled $300,000. For dozens of bystanders it was 'finders keepers.' Take this poll. What would you do?
- FEMA Fatale This Week In Blunders – April 20-26
- JPMorgan Chase On A Chase This Week In Blunders – April 13-19
- Ethereum Delirium Two brothers allegedly stole $25 million worth of crypto. Now they claim they should be allowed to keep it
- Mars Bars M&Ms maker allegedly gets Twixt out of millions
- Losing $8 Billion In A Dollar Store Money doesn't grow on Dollar Tree
- The Idiot Economy Wall Street luminaries finally realize that they put buffoons in charge of the global economy
- Peter Principal This Week In Blunders – March 30-April 6
- Big Law Squeals Like A Pig Allegedly high-powered law firms prove they can't even defend themselves
- JPMorgan Chumps A young fraudster duped the nation's largest bank out of $175 million. Now she doesn't want to wear her ankle bracelet
- Loan Sharks, How Cliché This Week In Blunders – March 23-29
- Bankrupt Barbie 23andMe's CEO Anne Wojcicki resigns as DNA testing company files Chapter 11
- Send Musk To Mars This Week In Blunders – March 16-22
- Netflop Somehow the streaming-video giant blew $55 million on a whack-job director
- Slumlord Award This Week In Blunders – March 9-15
- Getting The Lead Out Magellan executives lied about their blood-testing devices, putting thousands of lead-poisoning victims at risk
- Suck-Up Sam This Week In Blunders - March 2-8
- Aloha Suckers Another bankster holiday is in the making because Americans never learn
- Croaking At Kroger Whatever this grocery giant's CEO did, it's costing him millions
- A Bloody Mess This Week In Blunders - Feb. 23-March 1
- All Fyred Up Again Billy McFarland is selling $25,000 tickets for Fyre 2. Who's in?
- Natural Born Killers This Week In Blunders – Feb. 16-22
- The Fugitive After three years on the run, a CNBC financial analyst pleads guilty to fraud
- Property Sex A Justice Department crackdown on landlords who sexually harass tenants hasn't ended the nightmare
- Battle Of The Oligarchs This Week In Blunders – Feb. 9-15
- Freeing The Wolves The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is on pause. Jordan Belfort fans never had it so good.
- Money Mule This Week In Blunders - Feb. 1- Feb 8
- China’s Jolly Rogers Anyone who knows what the Federal Reserve will do next can make billions. A senior Fed advisor allegedly sold China an insider track.
- The Forgotten Ponzi This Week In Blunders – Jan. 26-31
- Trumpflation Does anyone really think our new president can end inflation?
- Drunks Wanted This Week in Blunders – Jan. 19-25
- Blowing A Fartcoin Are meme coins heralding the next market crash?
- Billionaires Are Destroying Everything, And They Know It The World Economic Forum's 2025 Global Risks Report is a roadmap for the devastation to come
- Chicken Soup For The Soulless This Week In Blunders – Jan. 12-18
- Can Musk Single-Handedly Capture A Regulator? A relatively petty case against the multibillionaire may signal who is really running the country
- You Can Plunder, Too Private Equity firms want average Americans to join in the looting
- Florida Man Goes To The Movies This Week In Blunders – Jan. 5-11
- Bigots Fly Free United Airlines may be under fire for its diversity efforts, but it just settled a nasty racial discrimination case
- Lock ‘Em Up Welcome to the Business Blunders Hall of Shame commemorating top business leaders convicted of felonies
- Tip Your Banker? This Week in Blunders – Dec. 29 - Jan. 4
- Business Blunders Hall Of Shame From magnate to inmate: These are the nation's most notable white-collar convicts
- Unshackling Ponzi Perps It’s a bad idea to let convicted swindlers go free. Biden just gave clemency to a slew of them
- Married To Madoff Victims of a fraud that regulators missed decades ago are finally getting most of their money back
- MAGA Mad About Musk This Week in Blunders – Dec. 22-28
- Biggest Business Blunders of 2024 It was an ignominious year for economic forecasters, CrowdStrike, Boeing, FTX, Mattel, Truth Social, Red Lobster, Fisker, Spirit Airlines, TicketMaster and the dumbest bank embezzler in history
- Go To Zelle This Week in Blunders – Dec. 15-21
- Basketball Jones Former Harlem Globetrotter and NC State point guard gets seven years for a Covid-19 loan scam
- A CEO’s Road To Hell It began with forbidden love and ended in felony charges for Comtech’s Ken Peterman
- Sorry About That Opiod Thing This Week In Blunders – Dec. 8-14
- Spoiled, Rotten Day Trader Ian G. Bell touted a wealthy background to allegedly dupe investors in his money-losing investment scheme
- Shot In The Back Did maddening back pain drive Luigi Mangione to murder UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson?
- The Killionaire Here's why the man who gunned down UnitedHealthcare's CEO became an instant folk hero
- Enron Was A Parody Of Itself Here's where CEO Ken Lay ate before he died
- Big Blunders Come In Small Packages Macys blames an employee for hiding 'small package delivery' expenses. Anyone remember the boxes at Miniscribe?
- Billion-Dollar Reprobate Bill Hwang lost billions investing 'according to the Will of God.' Now he's going to prison for cheating Wall Street banks
- Hitting The 'Undo' Button At FTX Gary Wang wrote the code that enabled an $8 billion fraud. Prosecutors and a federal judge sang his praises
- Ponzi Once, Ponzi Twice A New Jersey man got probation for running a $300 million scam. Then he launched a $658 million fraud with ads on Fox News
- Hello? What About The $36 Trillion Tab? America's balance sheet is about to get worse and Republicans don't care
- A Mouse That Roared A small-time CEO launched a proxy war with $17.32 in his company's brokerage account. Now he's going to prison.
- Bozo Bezos The Washington Post's billionaire owner makes a clownish excuse for killing a presidential endorsement
- CEOs Gone Wild Abercrombie & Fitch had to know its CEO was a freak
- X Marks the Spot An Alabama man hacks the Securities and Exchange Commission with an iPhone, then returns it for a refund
- Danger, Will Robinson Destiny Robotics promised AI-powered humanoids that could form meaningful relationships, but it delivered a wig stand
- All the Kosher Meals You Can Eat Lufthansa gets sacked with a record fine for banning Jews from a flight
- Magic Mushroom ‘Pump and Dump’ Here's what can happen when 'shroom heads take control of a penny stock
- InHumana Bad reviews matter, and this health care insurer is paying a hefty price for ignoring them
- And the Winner is … Walmart The nation's largest grocer must be loving government efforts to break up the $25 billion Kroger-Albertsons deal
- The Incredible Shrinking Billionaire The chips are down for EchoStar's poker-playing Charlie Ergen
- Plastic Balls ExxonMobil put polymers in our testicles
- Bankster Bonus A top Old National Bank executive bags $2.6 Million after his arrest for allegedly molesting a child
- Watery Grave CEOs usually don't implode as literally as OceanGate's Stockton Rush
- Drivin’ that Train It's the end of the line for the embattled Norfolk Southern CEO
- Stinky Stonk Anatomy of a nightmare investment that's poised to get worse
- The Music Man Michael Smith allegedly played his AI-generated music billions of times to bots, ripping off streaming services and artists
- One Sorry Ferrari Online gaming CEO hustles car broker and scams investors with an IPO that never happened
- Adam Family Brothers allegedly raised $60 million with a phony crypto bot and spent investors' money on new homes and luxury goodsPiggy Banker A Bank CEO robs his own bank while crypto scammers rob him
- Clowns In Court An FTX felon wants to take back his guilty plea after prosecutors charged his girlfriend with campaign finance violations
- Piggy Banker A Bank CEO robs his own bank while crypto scammers rob him
- The Wonders of Blunders Why I follow business failures, and why you should, too.
- Holy Payday Batman A CEO bags $250 million driving his hospital chain into bankruptcy
- Design Your Life An alleged Ponzi schemer bagged $1 million a day with happy talk
- Nike Air Athletic-apparel giant's top executives preach climate change as they rev up their corporate jets
- If you can't woo 'em, sue 'em Elon Musk ran off advertisers; now he's suing them for leaving
- Drunken Chicken Tyson Foods' suspended chief financial officer could make a comeback
- In Real Life A "serial founder" finds a serial sucker in SoftBank
- Smoke on the Water Luxury Miami condo association sues to evict chain-smoking fraudster
- Beyond Stupid TV stock tips are for chumps
- Canary in a CrowdStrike Cybersecurity giant's blunder is a warning for the whole world
- Boeing’s Lost Spirit Outsourcing proves bad for business
- Lizards of Ozy The chameleons at failed Ozy Media are turning orange
- A Harvard Business Blunder Graduates duped in a ridiculous Ponzi scheme
- Con Air Fly the felonious skies with Boeing
- Smell the Glove Milwaukee Tool reeks of forced Chinese labor, lawsuit alleges
- Fisker the Frisker An electric car entrepreneur offers a valuable business lesson: If at first you don't succeed, file, file again
- Musk Mouth It takes a genius a long time to address an obvious blunder
- Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word A simple apology proved difficult for crypto tycoon Do Kwon after the $45 billion collapse of his Terraform Labs
- Epoch Crimes The finance chief of a far-right publication allegedly went far wrong
- Ticketbastard Live Nation deserves every ounce of contempt it has provoked
- How to Boil a Lobster Endless shrimp didn't drive this soggy seafood chain into bankruptcy
- Take Out Your Trash The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. insures bank deposits, bullies, racists and sexual predators
- Sam in the Slam FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried invests in beans and rice
- Billionaire Prison Time Here's how a hedge fund honcho managed incarceration
- ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ Saves Crypto promoter charged with dodging $48 million in taxes
- The Power of Red Failed Republic First Bancorp learns that 'fans' are fickle
- Our Deadhead Fed Head Jerome Powell has flubbed inflation
- Google This Billionaire A Silicon Valley legend makes his dumbest trade ever
- Don’t Listen to Sam Boeing engineer warns of 'catastrophic accidents and passenger fatalities'
- Calling Spirit Airlines on the Ouija Board Will customers miss this carrier if it dies?
- Musk’s F-Ing Message The genius of our age is scaring Tesla's customers
- A CEO Who Made His Bed Mattress Firm's latest buyer may be short on memory foam
- They Bought Crypto From a Klepto FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's trail of tears spills into court
- What’s in Your Wallet? Abusing company credit cards is a common employee grift
- My Latest Blunder Lessons from an epic failure at The Messenger
Business Blunders
I have always been fascinated by the havoc blunders wreak on investors, lenders, associates, employees, customers and, ultimately, the people who make them. Subscribe to Business Blunders and learn from the biggest mistakes in business.