Free Republic

David Myers, a former Worldcom executive who served 11 months in prison after being convicted of fraud, received a $7.5 million loan that was guaranteed by the federal government with money from the 2009 stimulus. Worldcom filed the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. history 2002, after three years of “falsely professing financial growth and profitability to increase the price of WorldCom’s stock.” As Worldcom controller, Myers was one of the three executives most intimately involved in perpetrating the fraud, which exaggerated that company’s value by $11 billion.

New online program can replace trip to a field office WASHINGTON — The Social Security Administration, envisioning the near-future prospect of 10,000 baby boomers applying for benefits every day, has put together a new online service that will allow people to get their benefits without ever traveling to a Social Security field office. The agency, in introducing the program Tuesday, said most people will be able to apply for their retirement or disability benefits in 15 minutes or less.

A new YouTube group, Taxpayers for Truth, has a good question to ask today. The Bush administration frog-marched executives from Enron, Tyco, and Worldcom into federal prison for their financial shenanigans, in collapses that look positively microscopic in the wake of the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Why hasn’t anyone in the recent failure received the same treatment? Here is the roster presented by the video, in brief: Bernard Ebbers, Worldcom: 25 years in prisonKen Lay, Enron: Convicted on 10 counts, died before serving sentenceJeff Skilling, Enron: 24 years in prisonAndrew Fastow, Enron: 10 years in prisonDennis Koslowski,...

Fannie/Freddie Scandal Dwarfs Enron, WorldCom RUSH: Investor's Business Daily today has just a great, great editorial: "Should Congress Be 'Perp-Walked'?" They say, "A federal grand jury in New York is probing the accounting shenanigans at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's about time, and we hope it doesn't end there. Remember the early 2000s, when companies such as WorldCom, Enron, Tyco and Xerox suddenly and spectacularly were revealed to have been cooking their books? Remember the glee expressed by Washington politicians, especially Democrats, as they watched CEOs and their underlings get perp-walked out of their buildings and into federal custody?...

Perhaps it is one of the fruits of the “self-esteem” emphasis in our schools that so many people feel confident to voice strong convictions about things they know little or nothing about — or, worse yet, are misinformed about. One of the hardest things for anyone to be informed about is the value of someone else’s productivity. Yet there are cries from all directions that some people are being paid “too much” and others “too little.” Judging Worth Who can possibly be better informed about the value of what someone else produces than those who use the goods or services...

Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer, was handed 7.5m stock options in 2001 without the required authorisation from the company’s board of directors, according to people familiar with the matter. Records that purported to show a full board meeting had taken place to approve Mr Jobs’ remuneration, as required by Apple’s procedures, were later falsified. These are now among the pieces of evidence being weighed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as it decides whether to pursue a case against the company or any individuals over the affair, according to these people.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Manhattan federal judge overseeing the main class-action lawsuit over WorldCom Inc.'s collapse on Wednesday authorized the payment of up to $4.52 billion to aggrieved investors. U.S. Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. Court for the Southern District of New York said the distribution should be made "as soon as practicable." More than one dozen investment banks, including Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., agreed to pay about $6.15 billion to resolve allegations that they helped WorldCom sell bonds when they should have known the phone company was concealing its true financial condition. The remaining...

It seems that the SEC is probing everyone these days, why did we hear so little about SEC probes under Clinton? Is there data available suggesting that the Bush administration has been more agressive with the SEC than Clinton?

Former Clinton political hitman James Carville, who recently touted New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for a 2008 presidential run, is reportedly behind an advertising campaign attacking President Bush for his 1990 sale of Harken Energy stock as well as his ties to the oil industry in general. American Family Voices, a group described by the New York Times as "secretive," has paid to run a 30-second commercial on cable news programs in Washington, D.C., and in New York through Thursday. The ad blasts President Bush as "sly like a fox" for talking down his dealings with Harken Energy, which Democrats...

NEW YORK - Bonuses at Wall Street firms climbed to a projected record of $21.5 billion last year as revenue grew, according to the New York state comptroller's office. Comptroller Alan Hevesi said Wednesday that 2005's bonus tally was $2 billion more than the old record, which was set in 2000. In 2004, Wall Street bonuses came to an estimated $18.6 billion. Last year's average bonus was pegged at $125,500, also a record, Hevesi said. Revenue at Wall Street firms rose 44.5 percent through the first three quarters of 2005, climbing to the highest level since 2000, the year when...

One of the things that makes me a moderate conservative rather than an extreme-right conservative is that I have never forgotten something my business-law college professor told us – that when government passes a new law or regulation that places limits on what businessmen or markets can do, it’s always because some people acted to excess and spoiled everything. Although the situation has changed slightly for the better, this kind of condition clearly exists in the area of top-executive pay (that of CEOs), and in the aftermath of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and Global Crossing, cries out for some action.

Former Worldcom Chief Executive Bernard Ebbers was handed a 25-year prison term for directing the biggest accounting fraud in corporate history, leaving thousands of investors empty-handed. Ebbers, who built a small Mississippi-based long distance company into a telecommunications powerhouse, was found guilty on March 15 on all charges — one count of conspiracy, one count of securities fraud and seven counts of false regulatory filings. But he could also be a charming and folksy CEO, who preferred cowboy boots to suits, opened shareholder meetings with a prayer, ate lunch in the cafeteria and ran a company that had become a...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Former WorldCom chief Bernard Ebbers will pay $5 million and transfer nearly all his assets into a liquidation trust to settle civil charges related to the company's accounting fraud, the government said Thursday. Federal prosecutors said the trust, which would sell off Ebbers' assets, would be worth up to $40 million. As a result, prosecutors said they would not seek restitution when Ebbers is sentenced July 13. The settlement springs from a class-action suit brought by investors against former WorldCom executives and board members, plus investment banks that underwrote WorldCom securities and auditing firm Arthur Andersen....

JACKSON, Miss. - MCI Inc. will pay $100 million in cash to cover back taxes that its predecessor WorldCom Inc. owed Mississippi, state Attorney General Jim Hood announced Monday. The telecommunications company also will turn over its former headquarters building in downtown Jackson to the state as part of the settlement, Hood said. The building has not been appraised, he said. WorldCom collapsed in 2002 amid revelations of an $11 billion accounting fraud to inflate earnings and hide expenses. WorldCom, which got its start in Mississippi, was once headquartered in Jackson and later moved to nearby Clinton. MCI is now...

Journalists love a scandal. All too often that means the rest of us get fed round-the-clock coverage of Michael Jackson or enough celebrity gossip to make even a Hollywood agent blush. Sometimes that scandal is closer to home, and what's closer to your home than your mortgage? Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage association, has been battling a mounting scandal since last year. It has accounting errors of about $11 billion. That's more than nineteenfold Enron's $567 million error. Then there's a Justice Department inquiry, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, and an Office of Federal Housing Enterprise complaint.

Jury Finds Ex-WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers Guilty on All Counts in Connection With Massive Fraud NEW YORK (AP) -- Bernard Ebbers, the once-swaggering CEO of WorldCom, was convicted Tuesday of engineering the largest corporate fraud in U.S. history -- an $11 billion accounting scandal that capsized the big telecom company three years ago. The verdict marked a colossal fall for Ebbers, who had turned a humble Mississippi long-distance provider into a global telecommunications power, swallowing up companies along the way and earning the nickname "Telecom Cowboy." A federal jury in Manhattan returned guilty verdicts on all nine counts, including securities...

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.

NEW YORK (AP) -- In their first day of deliberations, jurors in the trial of former WorldCom chief Bernard Ebbers asked to review key testimony from a star prosecution witness. The jury, which spent five hours Friday discussing the case, must determine whether Ebbers orchestrated the $11 billion accounting scheme that drove WorldCom into bankruptcy three years ago

Sensing public outrage over business corruption in America is waning, some in the corporate community are seizing on the shift in mood to try to roll back reforms, say top U.S. officials and academics. "There's clearly a rearguard action going on," said Maryland Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes in an interview three years after the Enron debacle that led to his co-authoring of landmark corporate governance and accounting reforms in 2002. Business scandals are now daily fare for Americans, from the prison sentencing on Friday of a former top Boeing Co. executive to revelations of abusive trading in the mutual fund...

The fighting entrepreneurial spirit was a hallmark of the man who helped found MCI -- William G. McGowan. McGowan, a financier who was brought in to save the nearly bankrupt MCI Communications Corp., in 1968 was a scrappy fighter determined to take on the giant AT&T, which at that time had monopoly control over all telephone service in the United States. Early in his bid to offer long-distance service, McGowan concluded that the company needed to be in Washington, where it could monitor its battles in the courts and Congress and before the Federal Communications Commission. Until then, the only...