Ebbers – World CON

From AP: Bernard Ebbers, WorldCom, was convicted Tuesday and guilty on all counts; one count of conspiracy, one count of securities fraud and seven counts of false regulatory filings. The crimes could land Ebbers in prison for 85 years. Might I add, it couldn’t happen to a better person.

The conviction comes more than two years after an internal auditor began asking questions about curious accounting at WorldCom, touching off a scandal that eventually unearthed $11 billion in cooked books.

Prosecution testimony at the six-week trial portrayed Ebbers, 63, as obsessed with keeping WorldCom’s stock price high, and panicked about $400 million in personal loans that were backed by his shares in the company

On a personal note I would like to say I now feel I feel vindicated for the fraud that MCI/WorldCom tried to perpetrate by triple billing me and altering my fixed 5-10 payment plan on a weekly basis. A problem that took nearly a year to correct. Thank you Mr. Manhattan DA.

What is just as important to point out is the Bush Administration’s efforts to go after White collar crime. For people in the pocket of big business they certainly did not turn their heads like a certain formerly President where all these frauds were perpetrated on the American public.

In winning a conviction against Ebbers, federal prosecutors in Manhattan rung up another victory in a remarkable string of white-collar prosecutions that began in the summer of 2002.

Martha Stewart, Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas and former dot-com banking star Frank Quattrone were all found guilty during that stretch – with the same prosecutor, David Anders, handling both Quattrone and Ebbers.

The prosecutors have also wrung guilty pleas from countless other executives, including ImClone Systems Inc. founder Sam Waksal and five other former WorldCom officials who agreed to cooperate against Ebbers.

No wonder the Clinton economy was so good. Between a dot.com bubble and letting corporate crime run amok with inflated and false stock prices, why would it not have?