Jury convicts Ebbers
on all counts in fraud case

Former WorldCom Chief Executive Bernard Ebbers, who built a small Mississippi-based long distance company into a telecommunications powerhouse, was found guilty Tuesday of directing the biggest accounting fraud in corporate history, leaving thousands of investors empty-handed.

A federal jury in Manhattan deliberated eight days before dismissing Ebbers’ testimony that he knew nothing about the details behind the $11 billion securities fraud, which drove the company into the nation's largest corporate bankruptcy in 2002.

The jury convicted him on all charges — one count of conspiracy, one count of securities fraud and seven counts of false regulatory filings. Ebbers, 63, could face up to 85 years in prison.

The tall, bearded Ebbers, who worked as a bouncer, basketball coach and milkman before getting into the telecommunications business, sat with his hands folded as the verdict was read and showed little reaction. He then turned to hug his wife, who was crying.

Ebbers made no comment as he left the courthouse, but his attorney Reid Weingarten vowed to appeal.

“The fight will continue,” Weingarten said, adding that the case was “riddled with reasonable doubt.” When asked for his client's reaction to the verdict, Weingarten said, “I’m sure he’s devastated.”

The conviction came more than two years after an internal auditor began asking questions about curious accounting at WorldCom, touching off a scandal that eventually unearthed $11 billion in erroneously declared revenues and expenses.

Prosecution testimony at the six-week trial portrayed Ebbers as obsessed with keeping WorldCom’s stock price high and panicked about $400 million in personal loans that were backed by his shares in the company.

Ebbers gambled by taking the witness stand late in the trial, insisting he was unfamiliar with the details of accounting and knew nothing about the fraud taking place on his watch. Others described him as a brusque and exacting executive, known to toss unprepared underlings from meetings and count parked cars at night to see how many people were working late.

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 Wall Street darling by the late 1990s.

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