And I suspect that corporate buyers tend to get full-fare refundable tickets more often than tourists anyway.

ehh, I dunno about that. We (750 person company) always buy non refundable, but if we cancel, the credit can go into our company account to be used later sometimes.

So at least it's pseudo-refundable, assuming that you tend to rebook with the same airlines and end up using that credit later anyway. Which is still a small incentive to cancel someone's return flight. Although I guess this only steers the motivation away from "irrational spite" to "petty sociopathy".

If there's a shred of truth to the story, I can only see two scenarios.

1 - The hiring manager had to put in a lot of effort budget-wise to make the flying in happen and when he found out it was more of a complete failure than a rubber stamp, he had to save face.

2 - The candidate dramatically misrepresented themselves and lied to get in the door. Especially in the case of a cash limited start up, that could hurt - even more so if the story about high air fares due to location is true.

Either way, I think it's a lie, or at minimum the candidate isn't being entirely up front.

There's also a chance that the company ran out of money. Sometimes the CEO comes into work one morning and says "foo deal with bar investor broke, we have six weeks runway, cancel every expense you can."