Bre-X Minerals Ltd.

Perpetrators of one of the largest frauds in Canadian business history.

Bre-X was a gold mining company that operated mostly in the 1990s, during which time it announced discovery of a large deposit (as much as 200 million ounces) at a site in Borneo. The site was tampered with to give the appearance of large gold deposits, and the company’s stock soared from being a penny stock...to having a market cap of more than $6 billion CAD.

However, once the fraud was discovered, the company collapsed, and shares became worthless. Whoopsies.