About the channel
Paper Empires: financial crime documentaries from court records. Fraud, forged books and corporate collapse, told from the filings and the verdicts.
Paper Empires tells the stories of fortunes that existed only on paper.
Every episode follows one collapse from the inside: the arrangement that looked ordinary, the people who signed off on it, the moment the arithmetic stopped working, and what was left when the money was gone.
Researched from court records, regulatory findings and contemporary reporting. Sources are listed in every description.
New documentary every week.
The standards below apply to every episode.
Court records
The same disclosure appears in every episode's description, above the source list.
This film is reconstructed from primary records. Every factual claim is drawn from court filings, regulatory releases or contemporary reporting, and each source is listed below.
Where a claim comes from an allegation rather than a finding of fact, the narration says so.
All images are illustrations created for this film. No archival photographs or footage are used.
The subject gate
Paper Empires covers cases that ended in a conviction, a settled judgment or a regulatory finding of fact, or where all principals died more than twenty years ago. Where the film reasons beyond the record, the narration says so.
Illustrations, not archive
On screen, after the cold open, every film carries this card:
Reconstructed from court records, regulatory filings and contemporary reporting.
All images are illustrations. No archival photographs or footage are used.
Sources are listed in the description.
And at the end, on the end card:
Every claim in this episode is drawn from court records, regulatory filings and contemporary reporting. The full source list is in the description.
Paper Empires covers cases that ended in conviction, settled judgment or a regulatory finding of fact. Where the film reasons beyond the record, the narration says so.
All images in this film are illustrations created for it. No archival photographs or footage are used, and no image depicts a real event as it was photographed.
Produced and edited by Chris Mole, winner of 14 Emmy Awards.