Bre-X

Bre-X Minerals Ltd. was a Canadian company that perpetrated a major fraud when it claimed that there was an enormous gold deposit at its gold mine in Busang, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. However, samples from the mine were "salted" and, in reality, the mine did not contain much gold at all; an estimated 40,000 investors were defrauded and lost their entire investments. Bre-X bought the Busang site in March 1993. In October 1995, the company announced that significant amounts of gold had been discovered, sending its stock price soaring. Originally a penny stock, its stock price reached a peak at CAD$286.50/share (split adjusted) in May 1996, with a total market capitalization of over CAD$6 billion. The company collapsed in May 1997 after the gold samples were found to be fraudulent. Filipino chief geologist Michael de Guzman is widely considered to be the mastermind behind the fraud. However, due to his highly suspicious death, the death of founder David Walsh, and a lack of evidence that other executives knew about the fraud, no one was criminally convicted.