WORLDCOM CLAIM HINGES ON MISSING DOCUMENTS: Shades of Enron, AA, Global X, Martha Stewart

NY POST ^ | 7/04/02 backstory 5/27/02 | BEN SILVERMAN

[Liz]

Like sands through the hour glass, these are the Days of WorldCom.

While WorldCom's current woes are well known, some of the telecom giant's past mistakes are beginning to make some noise. One such mistake was the company's investment in Metricom, a Silicon Valley company that operated the Ricochet wireless network. Metricom went bankrupt last summer and WorldCom claimed it was owed $355 million. WorldCom and Vulcan Ventures poured more than $600 million into the company.

[Liz]

These fellas all have the same playbook. Or maybe they schedule regular conference calls to discuss the best ways to scam shareholders and the SEC.

[DemoSmear]

Interesting article. The Bernie Ebbers model of aggressive acquisition based on crooked books began to unravel with the failed Sprint purchase and the crash of Nasdaq. Imagine the debt load we'd be discussing had the Sprint merger been approved.

When he purchased MCI for $36 billion of mostly stock, he paid volumes more than BT (British Telecom) had offered.

Part of Bernie's scam was to appear like a prudent spender, while at the same time paying huge additional sums for companies in trouble. He used to be known as the only Nasdaq 100 CEO who would arrive for conferences or parties in a taxi. This, while everyone else arrived in Limos. The guy was just nuts.

He hired one of the men most admired (Scott Sullivan) by Wall Street to cook his books for him. In my own opinion, when they look at the earlier year's books, they will find the entire kingdom was built on fraud and deception.