9. John Rusnak: Lost $691 Million

John Rusnak was employed at Allfirst bank as a currency trader in the year 1993. In the year 1996, Rusnak started trading with the Japanese Yen. As fate would have it, by 1997, Rusnak lost about $29.1 million, which rose to $300 million by 2001. He hid these losses by pretending that the bank was actually making profits. Lucky for the bank that the cat was out of the bag in Rusnak’s case. He was sentenced to about 7 years in prison on January 17, 2003 on the ground of bank fraud. At the time, he had concealed about $691 million of losses from the bank. He had very narrowly escaped a life-sentence of 30 years. This was due to his courteous behaviour in jail.