To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People Sept. 9, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/rogue/1999/09/09/thurrogue Corporate dark stars: The top 100 Bad companies: Payin' the price for not bein' nice. Plus: The sad tale of Sotheby's fake furniture scam and the porno prince who ate his own fortune. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Douglas Cruickshank Hey gang, here's a fun idea! If you enjoy the various lists of the most successful companies that appear each year in magazines such as Fortune and Forbes, you're going to love the list issued last week by a Washington-based legal publication. Or maybe not. According to an article published Tuesday on the Court TV Web site, the Corporate Crime Reporter, edited by Russell Mokhiber, last week released its list of the top 100 "corporate criminals" from the 1990s. No. 1 on CCR's list is the Swiss pharmaceutical firm F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., which earlier this year admitted it headed up an international conspiracy to "raise and fix prices of certain vitamins sold in the U.S. and elsewhere." The company paid a fine of $500 million. (Just how much sugar would it take to help that medicine go down?) Mokhiber is apparently something of a dreamer (if not a party pooper). Court TV reports that he's called for Attorney General Janet Reno to publish a "yearly report on corporate crime." Uh, don't think so, Russ -- the business of America is business and all that, remember? But how about a CD-ROM, complete with pictures of corporate officers, kept on file at the local police station, and a program by which the cops would go door to door and alert residents when one of these characters moved into the neighborhood. No? The list's most interesting feature (apart from its distinguished membership) is that every corporation the CCR included either pleaded guilty or no contest. Ranked according to the size of the fines they paid, some of the darkest stars were Daiwa Bank Ltd., fined $340 million for financial violations, Exxon ("How do you steer these dang ships anyway?"), fined $125 million for -- the envelope please -- environmental violations and Archer Daniels Midland, the agricultural conglomerate, which pitchforked over $100 million for price fixing. Among the other fine companies who achieved placement on the list are Rockwell, General Electric, Chevron, Unisys, Borden, Mitsubishi, Kodak, Hyundai, Princess Cruises and Adolph Coors Co. Congrats all around! But the real heartbreaker in the corporate misbehavior sweepstakes is stuffy old, tweedy old, dignified 'n' beyond reproach Sotheby's, the august international auction house headquartered in London. Sotheby's didn't make the CCR list, but it did make the Times of London after the newspaper this week revealed that the famed auctioneers have been selling fake antiques, mostly furniture, for years -- millions of pounds worth. Bad show, gents. The bloke taking much of the heat is Graham Child, Sotheby's recently departed (what a coincidence!) director and senior specialist, who, the Times story says, "has admitted failing to spot ... fake Georgian chairs," which were among the junk Sotheby's has been pawning off over the last decade. The price those particular chairs fetched was nothing to sneeze at -- £1.3 million for four of them -- and to his credit Child did not sneeze, though he did sniffle a bit. "Who doesn't have some problems at some juncture," Child told the Times. "People can get things wrong. Nobody is as pure as the driven snow. I have left Sotheby's, I am carrying on my life and I would really rather not comment on what has gone on in the past." Well, quite, and who could blame you, old chum? Still, Child, to whom his customers turned for expertise in little matters such as authenticity, especially in cases where gajillions of toadskins were changing hands, has rather seriously disappointed Sotheby's constituency. One expert likened his blooper to the "British Museum misreading the Elgin Marbles." Now, before we all lose our marbles, things have been a bit happier in crime's private sector recently. In Melbourne, Australia, thieves wiped out the entire contents of a toilet-paper truck, making off with $18,900 Australian worth of the sweet-smelling rolls on Monday of last week. Meanwhile, in Marion, Ky., police looking for a burglary suspect at the county jail found that the deputy jailer, Francisco Barela, 22, had implemented some very (very, very ... extremely) enlightened policies. The cops found their guy, but they also found cold beer, inmates roaming around willy-nilly, loaded guns in one cell and, in another, a prisoner in bed with an 18-year-old woman. Sadly, Barela was relieved of his duties and is said to now be spending his idle hours shopping for antique chairs. Finally, comes this not-so-happy account of success and contentment slipping through the well-lubricated fingers of Graham Waddon, 28. Until recently, Waddon, of Surrey, England, was pulling in as much as £30,000 a week operating 12 American-based porno Web sites from his two-bedroom home. Detectives believe Waddon may have made millions during the last few years, but they can't find it and suspect it's squirreled away in offshore accounts. However, while Waddon admitted to 11 counts of "publishing obscene articles," he was not sentenced to jail because "he was suffering from a severe thyroid complaint." As for his fortune, he says there ain't one. He insists that all the money was spent on take-out pizza and Chinese food. Burp. salon.com | Sept. 9, 1999