Posted on 03/15/2005 9:31:26 AM PST by Daus
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Bernard Ebbers, the former CEO of WorldCom, was found guilty Tuesday for his role in the mammoth accounting scandal that brought the company down two and half years ago.
A federal jury in New York, on its eighth day of deliberations, convicted Ebbers on all nine counts that he helped mastermind a $11 billion accounting fraud at WorldCom, now known as MCI.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Justice at last!
Just cleaning up remnants of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 - a law that said it was largely okay for companies to lie about expected revenue and made it very hard for defrauded investors to sue.
(Passed by Congress over the Clinton veto by both Dems and Reps)
Why did the case against Ebbers conclude faster than against Lay?
Was it tougher to build a case against Lay? Is the case against Lay weaker?
No Clue.
Bernie bump!
This is great news.
Thanks for the ping.
Woohoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Zeugma jumps up in his cube farm and dances a jig around the office. Stops when manager starts calling for security.
Growl... I had to go back and rediscover the names of all these dopes...
I dunno who led who down the garden path in Enron - though it appeared clear to me from the start that CFO Fastow and his inlaws and cronies were engineering a whole load of the problems there. Skilling seems to have been pretty culpable since much of Fastow's dirty dealings were definitely on Skilling's watch - and it seems hard to imagine that he was completely bamboozled by Fastow's dirty dealings. As I recall, Lay was brought back by Enron's board and charged with trying to recover the company from the scandal that was clearly brewing after his earlier layoff from Enron. It has never been clear to me that Lay himself had anything to do with trying definitely defraud anybody, but rather it seemed plausible he was simply trying desperately to save as much of the company as possible, using the prior knowledge he had from his earlier experience in the company. Whether he had dirty dealings before that hiatus from the company is completely unknown to me, and if so, he should be held culpable. And, contrary to some here, I believe that Lay added to his stock position during the time he was brought back to the company, though I could be mistaken.
I hope that the government has more on him than it had on Martha Stewart, but I will trust the jury to come to a proper decision of this case after they hear the evidence.
But but but but, Bush is supposed to be in the pocket of these guys cuz he's a Republican and all and that's why all this corruption occurred because the 90s were a time of greed and the Republicans looked the oooops.
I lost $2,800 on that P.O.S. stock while Winick and his P.A.L. Terry McAwfull (aka loser former Democrapic party chair) sucked 100s of millions of coin from investors and employees.
Trajan88; TAMU Class of '88
Good ole Bernie will not be donating much money to the DNC and the $inator Hildebea$t 2008 fund.
The Enron case is so complicated that they may be hard pressed to seat a jury that can absorb the facts of the case. Having done a joint venture with one of the Enron phoney baloney partnerships in the 1990s, I can assure you that nobody in my company understood the financial underpinnings of these partnerships. Their checks didn't bounce though, but we called it funny money at the time.
Part of the problem in getting to Lay was the necessity of going after lower men on the totem pole first, the ones who actually devised these schemes. In exchange for some leniency in sentencing, they've been cooperating with prosecutors to explain how and why the pyramid fell apart and Lay's involvement in it.
His trial will start this fall.
Many more corrupt CEOs need to go away for life and all of the wealth they amassed siezed- no legacy for their family, only shame.
He'll do less time then someone found in posession of $250 worth of crack.
"what's most interesting is that the majority of the talkng heads had it wrong..they all said that Ebbers was making a good defnse..that the government's case was weak, that the jury was falling asleep during the trial, etc...."
What do you expect from liberal mediots when one of their fellow liberals is on trial?
I'm not going to shed a tear for Ebbers, but let me tell you who was REALLY GUILTY here. That is every dumbass investor who decided to drop their money into a mega-telecom company that was headed by a highschool gym coach!
I dont think there was embezzlement per se, just false financial statements.
"That is every dumbass investor who decided to drop their money into a mega-telecom company that was headed by a highschool gym coach!"
Actually there has to be some expectation by the public that large companies will be held to strict accounting standards, so that they and the market CAN evaluate the merits of the company. Worldcom/LDDS was a real company, had real employees, bought other real companies, and then more, and was one of the largest telecoms in the world. The public had a right to expect their financials to be in order, which is what this trial is about.
It was definitely a preview of coming attractions and their was a picture of Ebbers slumped in courtroom after that exhcange.
Maybe in prison Bernie can learn how to make Hitlery a customized basket?
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