Company Frauds So Terrible You Won’t Believe They Actually Happened

Rite-Aid Is Wrong

Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

In 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed accounting fraud charges against a number of top Rite Aid executives. The charges claimed that former CEO Frank Bergonzi and Vice Chairman Franklin Brown had conducted a “wide-ranging ranging fraud scheme.”

From 1997 until 1999 the two executives falsely reported billions of dollars of profit. When the inaccuracies were discovered, Rite-Aid was forced to restate its net income from that period by $1.6 billion and its pre-tax income by $2.3 billion. CEO Martin Grass was sentenced to seven years in prison after being found guilty of fraud and the company’s stock prices plummeted.