WorldCom

WorldCom's 2002 bankruptcy was the largest in US history at the time, involving $11 billion in accounting fraud that inflated profits by treating operating expenses as capital expenditures. Once America's second-largest long-distance phone company with $35 billion in revenue, WorldCom's collapse destroyed $180 billion in shareholder value. CEO Bernie Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The scandal directly led to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.