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.

“The judge sent a powerful message to all corporate executives that long jail terms are the direct consequence of fraud,” said Jacob S Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor who is now a lawyer with Shulman, Rogers, Gandal, Pordy & Ecker PA in Rockville, Maryland.

US District Judge Barbara Jones in New York sentenced Ebbers three weeks after another federal judge gave John Rigas, the 80-year-old founder of Adelphia Communications Corp, a 15-year prison term for looting the company and lying about its finances.

Rigas’s son Timothy, the ex-finance chief, got 20 years. US authorities had asked for a life sentence.

Jones said the proper sentence range for Ebbers’s crime under federal sentencing guidelines was 30 years to life. She called the 30-year minimum “excessive.” She did not fine him.

Jurors found Ebbers guilty of conspiracy and securities fraud and seven counts of making false filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Ebbers said before his sentence that he would appeal.