The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "Bankruptcy" ...
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Green Energy Going Red
In this series of original and exclusive investigations, CBS documented the fate of $90 billion dollars in green energy stimulus tax spending and dug in to find out why it did not produced the promised results: a boom in green energy technology and products accompanied by a burst in employment. In Solar Scorching, we identified eleven green energy companies besides Solyndra that together got billions of tax dollars, only to declare bankruptcy or suffer other serious financial issues. Since our initial report, the number of failures has risen dramatically. CBS exposed the fact that the government secretly knew what a poor investment some of these companies were, even before it committed taxpayer billions. We obtained exclusive documents showing one project had confidentially been rated as a “junk bond,” but the government committed $43 million tax dollars anyway. It went bankrupt.
Tags: Taxes; green energy; Solyndra; taxpayers
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Lost Lake, Lost Dreams
A story focused on how a Tacoma developer's bankruptcy and real estate practices at a site marketed as a luxury RV park affected ordinary buyers, some of whom were unable to get deeds for RV lots that they had purchased, even after placing large sum's of cash in the developer's hands.
Tags: Real Estate; Bankruptcy
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Prium
A report on the dramatic rise and fall of Prium, a Pierce County, Washington State real estate company which lurched into one of the largest bankruptcy filings in state history.
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Rapid Descent
The reporter investigates the practices of one merchant cash advance industry. It details the lack of regulation that allowed the firm to take advantage of small business owners.
Tags: RapidAdvance; bankruptcy; oversight; merchant cash advance; small business
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The rise and fall of Denny Hecker
Denny Hecker is one of the” biggest, most well-known businessmen in the Twin Cities”. He owned car dealerships, a national car rental company, and was the star of many advertisements. Behind this perfect exterior is a story of criminal behaviors and massive debt. All these details were revealed after Hecker filed for personal bankruptcy, which began the “collapse of a massive empire”.
Tags: loans; revenue; money; fortune; recession; deal maker; financial; finances; assets; FOIA; lawsuits
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Economic Stress Map
The AP Economic Stress Map was conceived as a way to graphically analyze the impact of the recession on American communities, and to track changes over time. The map was first published on May 17, 2009 and is updated monthly. It plots three key economic indicators: unemployment; foreclosures; and bankruptcies.
Tags: economic meltdown; foreclosures; bankruptcies; unemployment; mapping; US; America; United States
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National Prearranged Services, a House of Cards
"This series concerned a multimillion-dollar insurance fraud perpetrated by National Prearranged services, a large national insurance provider, against dozens of its business customers, many of whom were driven to financial hardship and even bankruptcy as a result of NPS' actions.
Tags: fraud; prearranged funeral services; funeral; mortuary; insurance;
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Agriprocessors and Beyond: Inside the Kosher Meat Industry
This series of articles looked inside the kosher meat industry, a quietly guarded world worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The reporting began two years ago when the Forward's Nathaniel Popper wrote about the working conditions at the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors, in Postville, Iowa, setting off a wide-ranging debate in Jewish community. The paper has continued to follow the problems at Agriprocessors and reported early in 2008 on the debate withing the kosher industry about a widely used but apparently cruel method of kosher slaughter known as shackled and hoist. Then, in the middle of the year, federal agents, citing the Forward's reporting raided the Agriprocessors' plant in Iowa. Since the raid, the Forward has followed each legal development, but has also reported on elements of the story that were being overlooked. The first such article detailed the way in which Agriprocessors had handled immigrants and unions at its Brooklyn warehouse-sparking a case that went to the Supreme Court. The next set of articles investigated the working conditions in the rest of the kosher eat industry, with particular attention paid to the labor battles at Agriprocessors' biggest competitor, Alle Processing, which had been completely ignored. The article and chart on industry-wide conditions were the first effort to systematically set down the relative size and production of the major players in the kosher meat industry. The Forward also wrote a lengthy report on the immigrant workers from Agriprocessors who had been released from prison and ordered to testify in federal court against their supervisors, but were given no means to support themselves before the hearing date. After Agriprocessors declared bankruptcy, the Forward reported on the unnoticed consequences for the town and its inhabitants, from the lowly turkeys to the local bankers.
Tags: meat processing; kosher meat; agriculture; Agriprocessors; meatpacking; immigrant workers
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Demoted to Private: America's Military Housing Disaster
Political patronage, the zeal to privatize and a failure at background checks led to a disaster for taxpayers and military families in Pentagon housing programs in six states. All three branches of the service gave 8,000 military houses and billion-dollar contracts to a company headed by a politically-connected Texan involved in a messy bankruptcy and a Connecticut property management firm that had been previously suspended from HUD housing projects because it diverted millions to its own uses.
Tags: military; housing; privatization; Pentagon; government contracts; corporate abuse; whistle-blower
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Jefferson County (Ala.) Sewer Bonds: Penetrating the Fog of Municipal Debt
Until early 2008, no one paid attention to Jefferson County sewer debt. That is when auction-rate-security auctions began to fail and two municipal bond insurers for county bonds were downgraded. Soon, the most populous county in Alabama faced the threat of the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.
Tags: bond; municipal; auction; insurer; Alabama; sewer; county; bankruptcy; debt