Pay day loan companies.
Life insurance companies.
Professional hit(wo)men companies.
When someone asks what you think of as a corrupt, illegal, or consumer unfriendly company, these kinds of companies spring to mind. And while being the target of a hit is probably a lot worse than having to deal with a manager’s manager’s manager at a big insurance company, I’d say there’s a minimal difference.
So we took it upon ourselves to identify which companies and industries go out of their way to cause all of us the most pain and suffering (outside of dentists which we technically pay for the pleasure of going to). Specifically, those companies that had to pay the most in fines during 2018.
To do so we looked at the most recent data from Good Jobs First Violation Tracker. They have a pretty straightforward description of their project and sources of data:
“Violation Tracker is the first national search engine on corporate misconduct. It covers banking, consumer protection, false claims, environmental, wage & hour, unfair labor practice, health, safety, employment discrimination, price-fixing, bribery and other cases initiated by more than 40 federal regulatory agencies and all divisions of the Justice Department since 2000”.
We pulled the data for all of 2018 and aggregated “Penalty Amount” to the parent company level in order to identify the companies that paid the most in fines:
- Royal Bank of Scotland ($4,900,750,000)
- Wells Fargo ($3,122,608,441)
- Barclays ($2,000,000,000)
- ZTE ($1,400,000,000)
- Societe Generale ($1,329,126,916)
- HSBC ($866,600,000)
- AmerisourceBergen ($625,000,000)
- U.S. Bancorp ($617,400,000)
- Verizon Communications ($614,300,000)
- Citigroup ($475,797,475)
All in all, the companies in Good Jobs First database paid out an outlandish $22,727,958,383 in fines in 2018 with these top ten companies paying out $15,951,582,832 — or about 70% of the total amount.
Forget about the 80/20 rule, this is the 70 / 0.00008 rule.
You can find a detailed breakdown by industry, agency, and company below.
Summary Of Findings
- Royal Bank of Scotland, the most fine-laden company of 2018, managed to pay for Trump’s border wall in fines — $4,900,750,000
- 7 out of the top 10 companies are banks. And here I thought dentists were the worst people.
- *Financial Services, Telecommunications, and Healthcare Services were the three largest industries by fine amount.
- *Mining and minerals (500), retailing (148), and building materials (141) were the three largest industries by number of fines.
- The biggest collector of fines was the Justice Department Civil Division
- The Occupational Safety & Health Administration brought the most fines — 10,034
Methodology
We used data from Good Jobs First Violation Tracker for all of 2018.
We then aggregated “Penalty Amount” by the parent company or, if no parent company was present, the company name for every company in the data set — 12,477.
We sorted the result from highest total penalty amount to the lowest penalty amount.
Finally, we did the same procedure by “Major Industry of Parent” when the data was available (about 15% of companies had this field) and for government “Agency”, which was available for about 99%+ of penalties.
Below is a further breakdown by industry, agency, and the top 100 companies.
Industries With The Largest $ Amount Of Fines In 2018
| Rank | Industry | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Financial Services | $15,103,985,830 |
| 2 | Telecommunications | $2,089,654,431 |
| 3 | Healthcare Services | $793,021,485 |
| 4 | Wholesalers | $626,088,937 |
| 5 | Pharmaceuticals | $500,425,483 |
| 6 | Oil And Gas | $392,186,790 |
| 7 | Electrical And Electronic Equipment | $376,994,730 |
| 8 | Business Services | $169,205,931 |
| 9 | Retailing | $145,838,569 |
| 10 | Miscellaneous Manufacturing | $107,322,841 |
Agencies With Largest $ Amount Of Fines In 2018
| Rank | Agency | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Justice Department Civil Division | $9,328,658,000 |
| 2 | U.S. Attorney-Eastern District of New York | $2,009,315,000 |
| 3 | Bureau of Industry and Security | $1,401,174,600 |
| 4 | U.S. Attorney-Southern District of New York | $1,287,475,000 |
| 5 | Justice Department Criminal Division | $1,015,831,175 |
| 6 | Securities and Exchange Commission | $922,930,627 |
| 7 | Commodity Futures Trading Commission | $916,515,827 |
| 8 | Consumer Financial Protection Bureau | $895,222,001 |
| 9 | Federal Communications Commission | $883,868,855 |
| 10 | Office of the Comptroller of the Currency | $825,707,245 |
100 Companies With The Largest Amount Of Fines In 2018
| Rank | Company | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Royal Bank Of Scotland | $4,900,750,000 |
| 2 | Wells Fargo | $3,122,608,441 |
| 3 | Barclays | $2,000,000,000 |
| 4 | Zte | $1,400,000,000 |
| 5 | Societe Generale | $1,329,126,916 |
| 6 | Hsbc | $866,600,000 |
| 7 | Amerisourcebergen | $625,000,000 |
| 8 | U.S. Bancorp | $617,400,000 |
| 9 | Verizon Communications | $614,300,000 |
| 10 | Citigroup | $475,797,475 |
| 11 | Rabobank | $419,201,259 |
| 12 | Johnson & Johnson | $360,000,000 |
| 13 | Panasonic | $280,400,000 |
| 14 | Davita Healthcare Partners | $270,000,000 |
| 15 | Community Health Systems | $260,000,000 |
| 16 | Bnp Paribas | $180,000,000 |
| 17 | Deutsche Bank | $177,650,000 |
| 18 | Petrobras | $171,547,191 |
| 19 | Chevron | $153,098,597 |
| 20 | Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu | $149,599,057 |
| 21 | Moneygram International | $125,000,000 |
| 22 | Bank Of America | $106,876,723 |
| 23 | Jpmorgan Chase | $105,596,504 |
| 24 | Capital One Financial | $100,000,000 |
| 25 | Legg Mason | $98,700,000 |
| 26 | Zurcher Kantonalbank | $98,500,000 |
| 27 | Aegon | $97,600,000 |
| 28 | Sk Holdings | $90,384,872 |
| 29 | Beaumont Health | $84,500,000 |
| 30 | Best Insurance Contracts, Inc | $82,000,000 |
| 31 | Credit Suisse | $81,729,916 |
| 32 | Goldman Sachs | $68,840,000 |
| 33 | Toyobo | $66,000,000 |
| 34 | American Broadband & Telecommunications Company | $63,463,500 |
| 35 | Prime Healthcare Services Inc. | $61,750,000 |
| 36 | Basler Kantonalbank | $60,400,000 |
| 37 | Nippon Chemi-Con | $60,000,000 |
| 38 | Abbott Laboratories | $58,200,000 |
| 39 | Gs Caltex Corporation | $57,500,000 |
| 40 | Icap | $50,000,000 |
| 41 | Dollar Tree | $46,353,266 |
| 42 | Aurora Loan Services, Llc | $41,000,000 |
| 43 | Deutsche Telekom | $40,000,000 |
| 44 | Public Service Enterprise | $39,439,000 |
| 45 | Affordable Enterprises Of Arizona | $37,500,000 |
| 46 | Altaba | $35,000,000 |
| 47 | Walgreens Boots Alliance | $34,525,868 |
| 48 | Canada Drugs, Rockley Ventures, And River East Supplies | $34,000,000 |
| 49 | Northrop Grumman | $31,650,000 |
| 50 | Tcf Financial Corp. | $31,000,000 |
| 51 | Western Dubuque Biodiesel Llc | $31,000,000 |
| 52 | Medtronic | $30,900,000 |
| 53 | Bestcare Laboratory Services Llc | $30,571,635 |
| 54 | Signature Healthcare | $30,008,125 |
| 55 | Flir Systems | $30,000,000 |
| 56 | Mega International Commercial Bank Co., Ltd. | $29,000,000 |
| 57 | Polaris Industries | $27,250,000 |
| 58 | Sanofi | $25,200,000 |
| 59 | Ngl Energy Partners | $25,020,235 |
| 60 | Abercrombie & Fitch | $25,000,000 |
| 61 | Kalispell Regional Healthcare System | $24,000,000 |
| 62 | Benevis Llc | $23,900,000 |
| 63 | Pfizer | $23,850,000 |
| 64 | Healogics, Inc. | $22,908,162 |
| 65 | Nucor | $22,562,850 |
| 66 | Upmc | $20,750,000 |
| 67 | Paramedics Plus, Llc | $20,649,000 |
| 68 | Southwest Airlines | $20,596,911 |
| 69 | Tesla Motors | $20,144,663 |
| 70 | Inchcape Shipping Services Holdings Limited | $20,000,000 |
| 71 | Bunker Hill Mining Corp. (On Behalf Of Placer Mining Corporation) | $20,000,000 |
| 72 | Clovis Oncology | $20,000,000 |
| 73 | Williams Advisory Group, Llc | $19,450,034 |
| 74 | Dataconnex | $18,715,405 |
| 75 | Pnc Financial Services | $18,707,245 |
| 76 | Banner Health | $18,000,000 |
| 77 | Kellogg | $16,750,000 |
| 78 | Moody’S | $16,250,000 |
| 79 | Ubs | $15,006,246 |
| 80 | Elemetal Llc | $15,000,000 |
| 81 | Health Quest Systems, Inc. Et Al. | $14,700,000 |
| 82 | North American Power Group Ltd. | $14,400,000 |
| 83 | Bon Secours Mercy Health | $14,250,000 |
| 84 | Hydra Group | $14,000,001 |
| 85 | Intercontinentalexchange Group | $14,000,000 |
| 86 | United Technologies | $13,916,247 |
| 87 | Lennar | $13,254,951 |
| 88 | Kooima & Kaemingk Commodities, Inc. | $13,170,857 |
| 89 | Post Acute Medical, Llc | $13,168,000 |
| 90 | Mplx Lp | $13,028,000 |
| 91 | Uber Technologies | $13,000,000 |
| 92 | Softbank | $13,000,000 |
| 93 | Suncoke Energy | $12,500,250 |
| 94 | Bank Of China | $12,500,000 |
| 95 | Angiodynamics | $12,500,000 |
| 96 | Viasat Inc. | $12,177,631 |
| 97 | Kindred Healthcare | $12,027,127 |
| 98 | Commerzbank | $12,000,000 |
| 99 | Maruyasu Industries Co. Ltd. | $12,000,000 |
| 100 | Itg Inc. | $12,000,000 |