WorldCom boss gets 25 years for fraud

FORMER WorldCom Inc chairman Bernard Ebbers has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating the largest accounting fraud in US history, an $11 billion (€8.9bn) scheme that drove his company into bankruptcy.

Ebbers, 63, a former milkman and bouncer who helped found WorldCom, was convicted on March 15 of ordering subordinates to cook the books from 2000 to 2002 by hiding debt and inflating revenue.

The collapse of WorldCom, once the No 2 long-distance company, resulted in the largest bankruptcy in US history.