My favorite of these stories comes from a place up here in Northern Norway. A pretty desperate municipality gave away 150 acres of land (free, no strings attached) to a company which promised 3000 jobs, by building the worlds largest data center. Made some sense because the climate is naturally cold, and very low electricity prices back then.

A year or so later, the company was acquired by a crypto mining company for $10M USD - with the updated promise of maybe 10-15 jobs. Last year said crypto mining company offloaded the same land back to the municipality for $200k.

I can only assume that the founders/owners of the first company laughed all the way to the bank.