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The world’s public-record cases — mysteries, frauds, heists, scandals

A dossier atlas of public-record events. Each file is a documented case — unsolved disappearances, financial collapses, museum thefts, political scandals, industrial disasters and historic investigations — written as an encyclopedia, not a true-crime show.

Which dossier fits you? Compare cases Case rankings

Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.

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Which dossier fits you?

Six questions map your taste for mystery, scale, evidence and legal aftermath onto the archive.

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Compare cases

Put up to four dossiers side by side on notoriety, mystery, scale, evidence, law and culture.

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Case rankings

Every dossier ranked on one score axis at a time.

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Head-to-head cases

Paired dossiers — Madoff vs Ponzi, Titanic vs Sewol, Cooper vs Earhart and more.

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Across the archive

How cases are worked

Journalism, forensics, financial audit and public inquiry — after the fact.

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Myths vs record

What films get wrong, and what the documents still hold.

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Money trails

Recoveries, unpaid restitution and the scale of famous frauds.

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Archives

Where the paper, tape and wreckage actually live.

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Browse every dossier

❓ Mysteries

Unsolved or still-argued files — disappearances, abandoned ships, unidentified people.

❓ Mysteries D.B. Cooper 1971 · Unsolved On 24 November 1971 a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305, took $200,000 in Seattle and jumped from a Boeing 727; he was never found. Open → ❓ Mysteries Mary Celeste 1872 · Unsolved In December 1872 the brigantine Mary Celeste was found under sail near the Azores with cargo intact and no one aboard; Gibraltar’s salvage court never established why ten people had left. Open → ❓ Mysteries Amelia Earhart disappearance 1937 · Unsolved On 2 July 1937 Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanished on the Lae-to-Howland leg of an around-the-world flight; no wreck or remains have been identified. Open → ❓ Mysteries Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 2014 · Unsolved On 8 March 2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing and vanished; satellite handshakes and later Indian Ocean debris never produced a located wreck or a cause. Open → ❓ Mysteries Somerton Man 1948 · Mixed outcome On 1 December 1948 an unidentified man was found dead on Somerton Park beach; a Rubaiyat scrap reading Tamám Shud defined the case, and a 2022 DNA claim named Carl Webb without settling how he died. Open →

💹 Frauds

Schemes that collapsed in court: markets, blood tests, crypto exchanges, sovereign funds.

💹 Frauds Bernie Madoff 2008 · Convicted Bernard L. Madoff pleaded guilty in 2009 to the largest Ponzi scheme then recorded in U.S. court, after his New York investment business collapsed in December 2008. Open → 💹 Frauds Enron scandal 2001 · Convicted Enron's December 2001 bankruptcy exposed off-balance-sheet vehicles and mark-to-market abuse; prosecutions and the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act followed. Open → 💹 Frauds Theranos 2015 · Convicted Theranos promised laboratory results from a finger-stick. After 2015 reporting and a 2022 federal verdict, Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud against investors. Open → 💹 Frauds Charles Ponzi 1920 · Convicted Charles Ponzi's 1920 Boston collapse, built on promised profits from postal reply coupons, gave the English language its name for paying earlier investors with later ones. Open → 💹 Frauds FTX collapse 2022 · Convicted FTX collapsed in November 2022. A Manhattan jury convicted Sam Bankman-Fried in 2023 of fraud; in 2024 the court imposed a 25-year sentence. Open → 💹 Frauds 1MDB scandal 2015 · Convicted 1Malaysia Development Berhad became a global kleptocracy case after 2015 reporting. U.S. and Malaysian courts later recorded convictions, pleas, and multi-billion-dollar recoveries. Open →

🖼️ Heists

Thefts of art, diamonds, mail and icons — what was taken, what was recovered.

🖼️ Heists Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft 1990 · Unsolved On 18 March 1990 thirteen works vanished from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Empty frames still hang; the FBI reward stands and the case remains unsolved. Open → 🖼️ Heists Antwerp diamond heist 2003 · Mixed outcome Over the weekend of 15–16 February 2003 a vault at Antwerp's Diamond Centre was emptied of stones, jewellery and cash. Leonardo Notarbartolo was convicted; most of the haul was never recovered. Open → 🖼️ Heists Great Train Robbery 1963 · Convicted On 8 August 1963 a Glasgow-to-London Royal Mail train was robbed at Bridego Bridge in Buckinghamshire of £2.6 million. Most of the gang were convicted at Aylesbury; Ronnie Biggs later fled. Open → 🖼️ Heists 1911 Mona Lisa theft 1911 · Convicted On 21 August 1911 the Mona Lisa left the Louvre. Vincenzo Peruggia was caught in Florence in December 1913; the portrait returned to Paris in January 1914 and became a global celebrity. Open →

📰 Scandals

Political and leak cases that changed governments and reporting.

📰 Scandals Watergate scandal 1972 · Mixed outcome A 17 June 1972 break-in at the DNC in Washington's Watergate complex became a cover-up that ended in Richard Nixon's resignation on 9 August 1974 and a wave of United States ethics law. Open → 📰 Scandals Panama Papers 2016 · Mixed outcome On 3 April 2016 ICIJ and more than a hundred outlets began publishing 11.5 million files from Panama firm Mossack Fonseca, a leak that toppled governments and left a mixed dock of inquiries. Open → 📰 Scandals Park Geun-hye / Choi Soon-sil scandal 2016 · Convicted In 2016 Korean reporting showed that Choi Soon-sil had used her access to President Park Geun-hye to shake companies and warp state decisions. Candlelight crowds, impeachment and convictions followed. Open →

⚠️ Disasters

Non-war catastrophes whose inquiries rewrote safety law.

⚠️ Disasters Sinking of the Titanic 1912 · Closed On 14–15 April 1912 the White Star liner RMS Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank, killing about 1,500 people and forcing the first SOLAS convention. Open → ⚠️ Disasters Chernobyl disaster 1986 · Closed On 26 April 1986 an explosion at reactor 4 of the Chernobyl plant in the Ukrainian SSR became the worst nuclear accident on the public record and rewrote international nuclear law. Open → ⚠️ Disasters Sinking of MV Sewol 2014 · Convicted On 16 April 2014 the ferry MV Sewol capsized in the Yellow Sea; 304 people died or remain missing, and South Korean courts later convicted the captain and crew. Open → ⚠️ Disasters Bhopal disaster 1984 · Mixed outcome On the night of 2–3 December 1984 a methyl isocyanate leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal killed thousands and left a mixed legal record that still shapes industrial-disaster law. Open →

🔍 Investigations

Historic hunts — from Whitechapel paperwork to a Tokyo subway night.

🔍 Investigations Tokyo subway sarin attack 1995 · Convicted On 20 March 1995 members of Aum Shinrikyo released sarin on Tokyo subway trains, killing 13 people; the investigation and trials remade Japanese security law. Open → 🔍 Investigations Jack the Ripper 1888 · Unsolved In autumn 1888 a still-unidentified killer murdered at least five adult women in Whitechapel; the police files, press letters and later historiography created the modern true-crime myth. Open →

About this atlas

Does this atlas cover wars?
No. Armed conflict belongs in a separate wars atlas. This app is mysteries, frauds, heists, scandals, disasters and investigations.
Is this a how-to for crime?
No. Pages describe public-record facts and what investigators did after the fact. Methods to commit or conceal crime are omitted.
Are the scores verdicts?
No. They are relative 0–100 marks for browsing inside this set of 24 cases.
Why are some languages missing a case?
A language is published only when the dossier is fully translated. There is no English fallback under a localized URL.