8 Historical Scandals Which NEED To Be Made Into Films
6. The Crédit Mobilier Scandal: Fraud, Bribery, and the Union Pacific
During the 1860s, the Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Crédit Mobilier of America implemented a complex, wide-scale, two-part fraud which implicated multiple politicians and nearly brought ruin to Union Pacific.
Union Pacific specifically created Crédit Mobilier in order to carry out their fraudulent activities, utilising the company in order to severely inflate construction costs. While Union Pacific were building part of the First Transcontinental Railroad, they claimed that Credit Mobilier had charged around $94 million for their services.
In fact, that portion had only cost the company around $50 million, and corrupt executives claimed the excess amount for themselves. Worse still, they used some of these profits to bribe top-ranking politicians.
When this ruse was discovered several years later, nine politicians were identified as complicit, including senators, representatives, and the Vice President. Their careers were in tatters, and the American people began to distrust their elected officials. Union Pacific was nearly bankrupted by the scandal, taking many years to recover from the fallout of this scandal.
Corruption, bribery, and fraud typically make for fascinating (and aggravating) cinema, and we would love to see a film which investigates the web of lies which facilitated this heinous scheme.