# Enron Enron was a Houston-based energy company that became the most infamous corporate fraud case in American history when it collapsed in December 2001. At its peak, Enron was the seventh-largest company in the United States by revenue, lauded by business media as a model of innovation. In reality, its profits were largely fabricated through off-balance-sheet entities, mark-to-market accounting manipulation, and a corporate culture that rewarded deception at every level. The collapse wiped out billions in shareholder and employee retirement value and led to the criminal conviction of CEO Jeffrey Skilling and chairman Kenneth Lay (who died before sentencing). The full case is documented at [[Enron Scandal]]. Enron exemplifies the consequences of [[Deregulation]] ideology — the company had aggressively lobbied for the deregulation of energy markets and benefited from the same political [[Corruption]] networks it helped finance. The scandal produced the Sarbanes-Oxley Act but failed to prevent the broader pattern of corporate fraud that would recur in the 2008 financial crisis and beyond.