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Financial Forensics: The Due Diligence Files

by Sergio Stieben

Forensic dissection of capital markets collapses.Not headlines — mechanisms. How money moved. Where structures broke.T1 — Full autopsy. The collapse, the actors, the moment nobody stopped it.T2 — GP/LP room. 3 red flags in the documents. Due diligence questions. Active parallels in deals running today. For allocators, GPs, and fund professionals.Hosted by Sergio Stieben — 15 years in GP/LP relations, cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe.Try FFL Trial, free — run a deal through the same engine, scored against 140 documented collapses: https://financialforensicslabs.com.ar

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Episodes

  1. Sumitomo 1996: Mr. Five Percent Hid a Decade of Losses │File 170 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  2. Sumitomo 1996: A Hedge Netting to Zero │GP/LP - 3 Red Flags│File 170 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  3. LME Nickel 2022: Clearing Blind Spot │GP/LP - 3 Red Flags│File 169 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  4. LME Nickel 2022: One Hedge, Ten Brokers, $4B Erased │File 169 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  5. Bill Hwang 2024: Swap Fraud & Blind Spot │GP/LP - 3 Red Flags│File 168 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  6. Bill Hwang 2024: Nine Banks, One Hidden Position │File 168 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  7. Silvergate Bank 2023: Payment Network Concentration & Counterparty Single-Point-of-Failure │ GP/LP Analysis - 3 Red Flags │ File 167 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  8. Silvergate Bank 2023 : Every Major Crypto Exchange Cleared Through One Pipe. When the Bank Closed, So Did the Plumbing │ File 167 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  9. Genesis Global 2023: Intra-Group Note, No Real Repayment Source │ GP/LP Analysis - 3 Red Flags │ File 166 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  10. Genesis Global 2023: A $1.1B Loss, Paid With a 10-Year IOU │ File 166 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  11. FTX Extended 2020 : The Line of Code That Let Alameda Borrow $65 Billion - File 165 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  12. FTX Extended 2020 : Circular Collateral & the Insider Risk Exemption - GP/LP Analysis - File 165 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  13. Purdue Pharma 2019 : The Sackler Fortune & The Bankruptcy Shield│File 164 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  14. Purdue Pharma 2019 : Third-Party Releases vs Creditor Recovery│File 164 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  15. Mallinckrodt Opioid Bankruptcy 2025 : It Paid Victims Twice, and Cut Both Times │ File 163 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  16. Mallinckrodt 2020: Pre-Arranged Bankruptcy & Repeat Chapter 11 Recovery Cut │ GP/LP Analysis - 3 Red Flags │ File 163 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  17. Luckin Coffee 2020 Extended: Three Clocks, Three Months │ File 162 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  18. Luckin Coffee 2020: Governance Detection Lag & Compromised Audit Committee │ GP/LP Analysis - 3 Red Flags │ File 162 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  19. Bed Bath & Beyond 2023: Share Buyback Capital Destruction & Liquidity Runway Failure │ GP/LP Analysis - 3 Red Flags │File 161 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  20. Bed Bath & Beyond 2023 : $11.8B Spent Buying Back Its Own Stock Since 2004. It Couldn't Find $900M to Stay Open │File 161 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  21. Toys R Us 2017 : The Business Was Profitable. The Debt Was Not. KKR, Bain and Vornado Loaded $5B on It │File 160 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  22. Toys R Us 2017: LBO Debt Service Destruction & PE Sponsor Exit Architecture │ GP/LP Analysis - 3 Red Flags │File 160 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  23. Sears Holdings / Eddie Lampert 2022 : One Man, Three Roles, One Collapse | File 159 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  24. Sears Holdings / Eddie Lampert 2005 : Sears' Chairman Bought Back What He Stripped | File 159 T1

    Picture the ending first. A company's chairman and largest creditor -- the same person -- uses debt he already owns as currency to buy back what's left of the company out of bankruptcy, over objections from everyone else it owes money to. Years later, that same company's estate sues him, alleging...

  25. Johnson & Johnson Texas Two-Step 2021-2025 : J&J Created a Company Just to Go Bankrupt | File 158 T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  26. Johnson & Johnson Texas Two-Step 2025 : 3 Courts, Two different states.Same Verdict | File 158 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  27. Situational Awareness LP - Leopold Aschenbrenner 2026 : The Leverage Nobody Hid -GP/LP Analysis - File Extra T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  28. Situational Awareness LP - Leopold Aschenbrenner 2026 : The Fund That Was Honest About Everything and Still Got Margin-Called - Extra File T1

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  29. Penn Treaty Network America 2009–2017: Rehabilitation vs Liquidation Risk│File 157 T2

    This episode is part of Financial Forensics Labs — two shows, one forensic methodology: The Due Diligence Files traces how institutions collapse, The Signal Files traces how the good calls get made. Built from primary-record research by a 15-year capital markets professional. Get to know the...

  30. Penn Treaty Network America 2009–2017: Long-Term Care Insolvency│File 157 T1

    In 2009, Pennsylvania regulators placed Penn Treaty Network America into formal rehabilitation after identifying massive long-term care insurance underpricing. A 2012 court decision unexpectedly rejected the initial liquidation petition, allowing the impaired carrier to collect premiums for five...

  31. GE Capital 2018 : Long-Tail Liability Risk vs Actuarial Reserve Adequacy│EP156 T2

    How can a multi-billion dollar liability sit disclosed in public filings for over a decade and still catch institutional markets off guard? Unlike cases involving undisclosed entities or hidden control relationships, GE Capital’s long-term care exposure was named and audited throughout. This GP…

    more

  32. GE Capital 2018 : Long-Term Care Reserves & Actuarial Smoothing│EP156 T1

    In January 2018, General Electric stunned public markets by taking a $9.5 billion pretax charge and committing $15 billion in capital to re-reserve a legacy long-term care (LTC) insurance block it had stopped writing a decade earlier. This financial autopsy deconstructs how three multi-decade...

  33. Valeant Pharmaceuticals 2015: Roll-Up Strategy & The Philidor Channel│EP155 T1

    In early 2015, Valeant Pharmaceuticals reported that volume was driving earnings, yet internal quarterly data revealed that roughly 80% of growth stemmed from price increases. Shortly after peaking at a $90 billion market capitalization, Valeant’s stock collapsed by 97%. This financial autopsy...

  34. Valeant Pharmaceuticals 2015 : Undisclosed Related-Party Options & Captive Channel Control│EP155 T2

    Every part of Valeant’s aggressive pricing model was visible, but the mechanism making those prices collectible was concealed. This GP and LP institutional analysis deconstructs Valeant’s undisclosed control over Philidor Rx Services to evaluate related-party risk, channel concentration, and...

  35. HP & Autonomy 2012 : The $8.8B Write-Down & Dual Standard Autopsy│File 154 T1

    Eleven point one billion dollars changed hands for an enterprise software company, yet a massive share of its reported revenue was computer hardware sold at a loss and booked under a software license label. Thirteen months after the deal closed, Hewlett-Packard wrote off eight point eight billion...

  36. Autonomy HP 2012 : Certified Financials Reliance & Audit Quality Due Diligence│File 154 T2

    In a nine-figure acquisition, if the target's own auditor has certified its numbers for years, what exactly is the deal team independently verifying versus agreeing to trust a second time? This GP and LP institutional analysis deconstructs the structural reliance on certified financial statements...

  37. FIFA 2015: Correspondent Banking & Dollar Clearing Jurisdictional Vectors│File 153 T2

    Why did a private sports federation headquartered in Zurich, with no operations in the United States and no American shareholders, spend two decades exposed to American racketeering law? This GP and LP institutional analysis deconstructs the jurisdictional mechanism that allows domestic...

  38. FIFA 2015: Inside the $150M Private Sports Bribery Architecture│File 153 T1

    The police did not wait for room service. They walked into a five-star hotel on the edge of a Swiss lake before sunrise, led six men out through a side entrance, and dismantled a 24-year private bribery economy worth well over one hundred fifty million dollars. This financial autopsy deconstructs...

  39. Cobalt Energy 2017: Assigned Local Partners & The Clean Regulatory Failure│File 152 T1

    There is a registration address in Luanda that shows up on the incorporation papers of more than forty different companies, all of them eventually traced back to three of the same men. In 2010, an American oil company had already put its name on a partnership agreement with two of those…

    more

  40. Cobalt Energy 2017: Mandatory Consortia Risks vs Regulatory Proxy Blindspots│File 152 T2

    Here is a contradiction almost nobody flags when a company touts a new joint venture as "world class": the press release describing the partners came out months, sometimes years, before anyone independently confirmed who those partners actually were. The Cobalt precedent demonstrates how a…

    more

  41. Mozambique LNG 2021: The $20B Investment Decision & The Force Majeure Timeline│File 151 T1

    Twenty billion dollars of approved investment. Ninety percent of the plant's future output already sold, under contracts running into the next decade. And by the last week of April 2021, the number of company employees physically present on site was zero. This financial autopsy deconstructs the...

  42. Mozambique LNG 2021 : Quantitative Project Finance vs Dated Incident Logs│File 151 T2

    There is a number every financial model built for this deal got right down to the decimal point, and a number that never appeared in any of those models at all. The first was the percentage of plant output already sold under long-term contract before construction began: close to ninety percent.…

    more

  43. Anta Sports 2019: The Distributor Proxy Control & The Hidden SAIC Paper Trail│File 150 T1

    Hong Kong Stock Exchange, morning of July 8th, 2019. A trading halt hits one of the largest sportswear companies on the planet, mid-session, with no warning to retail shareholders. Somewhere in Manhattan, a research firm just pressed publish on a document built from something almost nobody…

    more

  44. Anta Sports 2019: Non-Wholly Owned Independence Claims vs Public Registry Reality│File 150 T2

    Six weeks. That is how long it took for two separate research firms, working independently, to build two different cases against the same company using two different methods—one built on a revenue estimate, one built on a corporate registry—and for the market to reprice the stock twice before...

  45. China Huarong 2021: The Unwritten Sovereign Guarantee & The $16 Billion Capital Wipeout│File 149 T1

    A company can report an eighty-five percent collapse in its own shareholder equity, a loss of almost sixteen billion dollars in a single year, and its dollar bonds barely move on the news. Not because the market didn't notice. Because the market had already made a bet, months earlier, on who...

  46. China Huarong 2021: Implicit Sovereign Backstops vs Contractual Credit Recourse│File 149 T2

    Here is a question almost nobody on the buy side asks explicitly when pricing a bond from a large, state-linked issuer: has anyone actually seen the document that guarantees this, or are we all just agreeing to believe the same thing at the same time? In most cases there is no document. 🔴 Every...

  47. Imtech 2015: The Phantom Order Book & Europe's Suppressed Corporate Warning│File 148 T1

    An engineering company can report a growing pipeline of contracts, rising revenue, and healthy margins for years, and still not have the cash to make this month's payroll. Both things can be true at once, because the revenue on the books was never really a measure of what had been delivered or...

  48. Imtech 2015: Percentage-of-Completion Drift & Cost Input Manipulation Economics│File 148 T2

    Here is a question almost nobody asks when reviewing a long-term construction or engineering contract on a counterparty's balance sheet: who actually produced the completion percentage driving the reported profit, and what happens to their bonus if that percentage comes in lower next quarter. 🔴...

  49. Ahold 2003: The Secret Side Letters & Europe's Multi-Billion Grocery Fraud│File 147 T1

    A retailer can report a bigger profit without selling one extra item off its shelves. All it has to do is book a supplier's promise of a future discount as if that discount had already been collected in cash. This financial autopsy details the 2003 collapse of Ahold, once one of the largest food...

  50. Ahold 2003: Joint Venture Consolidation Arbitrage & Promotional Allowance Timing Fraud│File 147 T2

    This GP and LP institutional layer analysis deconstructs the dual-engine accounting failure that compromised the financial reporting integrity of a global retail conglomerate. I have reviewed joint venture consolidation memos where a single auditor-facing control letter was improperly accepted...

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ABOUT THIS SHOW

Forensic dissection of capital markets collapses.Not headlines — mechanisms. How money moved. Where structures broke.T1 — Full autopsy. The collapse, the actors, the moment nobody stopped it.T2 — GP/LP room. 3 red flags in the documents. Due diligence questions. Active parallels in deals running today. For allocators, GPs, and fund professionals.Hosted by Sergio Stieben — 15 years in GP/LP relations, cross-border finance US-LatAm-Europe.Try FFL Trial, free — run a deal through the same engine, scored against 140 documented collapses: https://financialforensicslabs.com.ar

HOSTED BY

Sergio Stieben

CATEGORIES

business management

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does Financial Forensics: The Due Diligence Files have?

Financial Forensics: The Due Diligence Files currently has 342 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.

What is Financial Forensics: The Due Diligence Files about?

Forensic dissection of capital markets collapses.Not headlines — mechanisms. How money moved. Where structures broke.T1 — Full autopsy. The collapse, the actors, the moment nobody stopped it.T2 — GP/LP room. 3 red flags in the documents. Due diligence questions. Active parallels in deals running...

How often does Financial Forensics: The Due Diligence Files release new episodes?

Financial Forensics: The Due Diligence Files publishes regularly with 342 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.

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You can listen to Financial Forensics: The Due Diligence Files on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.

Who hosts Financial Forensics: The Due Diligence Files?

Financial Forensics: The Due Diligence Files is created and hosted by Sergio Stieben.
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