45 Industries People Claim Are Much More Corrupt Than The Public Realizes

We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty.

Honestly the whole online influencer is becoming such a problem because it targets youth to join in on it. What’s the end game with that? Age is a factor, kinda hard to be that hot blonde when your wrinkles are hitting you like a crazy person and the artithis kicks in. It’s worst for the twitch and youtubers because most of those cats are either going to need some serious work on their eyes or deal with carpal tunnel.

Yelp/Better Business Bureau

Basically it is a shakedown to remove poor reviews.

Throwaway. I worked in a non-profit blood laboratory, where we drew blood and separated the components to sell to hospitals. Our machines was outdated, our protective equipment was lackluster at best, and we were constantly told to increase production despite the lack of staff, absolutely no concern for our safety, and the exhausting 13 hour shifts we were forced to work (our normal shift should have been 8 hours.) By for our most profitable product was pooled platelets, since there are so many things that can go wrong when trying to separate them from Whole Blood. In total, including bags, testing, processing,labor, and subsidizing products that didn't make it, the cost to the company was around $5,000 max per unit, and since it was a non-profit, that should have been the cost to the Hospital, and in turn the receiving patient. However, the company would add costs that weren't incurred, and sell the unit directly to the Hospital for between $10,000-$15000. So yeah, that would be part of the reason why medical costs can be so insanely expensive, it's not necessarily the Hospital's fault. There were a lot more corrupt things about this company, but this is the one that tended to get on my nerves the most, especially since the public face of the organization was entirely about "saving lives.".

On the opposite foot, Casinos are generally much less corrupt than you would think. There is so much regulation and the threat of losing a license is a big deal.

Garbage/trash hauling. Landfills and recycling locations, especially small shops in rural areas. They'll mix recycling in with the regular garbage rather than process correctly, they'll skimp on the lining thickness required for a new hill, they can be a cash business that's impossible to record, so folks at the front desk will pocket the dump fees for folks who come in.

Crazy stuff.

Healthcare. Almost everyone you meet in a hospital has your best interest at heart. The administrators who employ them want you to pay up or go die somewhere else.

Metals.

Every part of it, from mining, to manufacturing/refining, to scrapping has the mob involved at least a little. (but mostly scrapping and mining)

edit: because of questions, I am in Oregon, but have done work with various companies all over the continental USA, and a touch in Russia and China. The worst for this is the northeast USA and Russia. The Russians were the only ones I was outright afraid of though, because they were the only ones to outright threaten us if we didn't pay on time. (before we even bought anything!).

Financial Advisors anywhere really, doesn't matter if it's from a institution or a private firm. The large majority of them are only out there to get commissions and to protect their own bottom line.

Was in that world for awhile (roughly 5 years), and it is a lot scummier once you realize that it's common in the industry to be 100% commission. From my personal experience working at one of the largest firms in the world (and they also tell you to tout that as a form of trust), I had seen 13 different advisers commit fraud in a span of about 3 years.

Ranging from something small like missing a disclosure form/skipping over some small but important details (such as surrender charges) to something as bad as forging signatures to start a sale in order to meet quarter end bonuses. There's also some really bad ones such as straight up lying to clients, using the word guaranteed returns, and other things that they ended up being caught with. All of these were quietly swept under the rug.

You can go on brokercheck to see if they have any reports. But honestly, you only get reported for doing really bad stuff (and if the client decides to completely follow through with the reporting... which most don't). And I can tell you, from that search, that those 13 advisers that I listed have nothing on their FINRA report. So they look "clean", but I would think that they are still doing the shady stuff today as they were in the past.

Regardless, not all of the industry is bad. But anything that relies on a person to rely on literally making a sale, or going home with nothing to eat or have a roof over their head, and people will easily bend the rules so that they can live. Especially since most of these firms take roughly 50-60% of the commissions.

So even if you make a big 3k sale, you're only seeing 1.5k. And from start to finish in a pipeline takes about a month at the very minimum. And that's if they agree to invest with you on the first meeting, because transferring money from institutions takes around 2-3 weeks.

Public relations! The intention is to manipulate the media so your company or client looks nice and likable. People feign friendships with journalists, one former peer even pitched a story at someone’s funeral, agencies are breeding grounds for disfunction and misery. It’s a terrible and manipulative industry.

I work as a caregiver for people with disabilities through an agency. When they find out that we're not a non-profit agency and we actually get paid for this (pretty much minimum wage, but we do get paid), some people act like we're just profiteering off of the less fortunate by not being volunteers/charity workers. Not corrupt in my own opinion, but a lot of people disagree.

Sorry Karens of the world, I gotta pay my bills somehow.

Auto mechanics.

There are plenty of honest shops out there, but there are also lots of places that won't think twice about charging for unnecessary repairs, and even for work they haven't actually done. Make sure you're going to someone you know you can trust.

Hospitals. A lot of people think that health insurance are the cause of crazy medical cost, but hospitals artificially inflate the cost of all services in what is called a Chargemaster, which is a list of the cost of all services that they do not disclose. They raise the cost of services so high so that when they make a "deal" with insurance, a 50% discount of something that has been made 10x more expense still gives them a huge profit.

United Way - use business leaders to shakedown their employees for donations. Most employees would rather just give directly to their favorite charity but are guilted or forced into giving to united way. Of course my local United way puts minorities in high positions so big corporations can feel they are doing social good but the ceo and others at UW are making $300k+.

Car dealerships.
The buy here pay here are the worst and will try and knock off heads as much as they can. They especially prey on people with bad credit or the I'll informed.

New car dealers are not much better. Bait and switches, mailers and they will do anything to cover up mistakes on their end.

I've seen many practices that are illegal but either they don't get caught or the customer does not know the severity of the dealers actions.

HR. Human Resources. They need to treat people like resource objects in order to do their job. HR isn't about resourcing humans, it's about humans as a resource.

Education. Specifically the companies that publish textbooks as well as College Board, the company that has a monopoly on standardized tests in the US.

Real Estate, the most corrupt line, that's how you hide your black money.

Jewellery. There's a reason as to why the Big 4 audit firms shy away from auditing SME jewellery shops as most are family run shops with unknown sources of money, improper stock records and no formal books.

Guiness book of world records.

Just watched a video from another thread about a minecraft streamer who beat Ali-a’s record but was forced to pay >$600 to verify his claim.