Bernard J. Ebbers, Convicted Former WorldCom Chief, Dies at 78
Bernard J. Ebbers, who spent 12 years in prison after presiding over a notorious $11 billion accounting fraud as chief executive of the telephone company WorldCom, died on Sunday. He was 78.
His death was announced by his lawyer, Graham P. Carner, in a statement that said his health had sharply deteriorated in recent months.
Mr. Ebbers, who was sentenced to 25 years in 2005, was released from a federal prison in Texas in December, having been granted compassionate release by a federal judge to spend his final months at home in Mississippi. His family said in the statement that he died “surrounded by his loving family, and not chained to a hospital bed without anyone he knew in the room.”
In what was once considered a great entrepreneurial success story, the former executive from a modest upbringing turned a small phone company in Mississippi into a telecommunications juggernaut. At its peak, the company employed 80,000 people.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/business/bernard-ebbers-dead.html
I worked for GTE back in the day when they were outbid for MCI by WorldCom.
At the time I thought something was fishy since GTE was an established corporation and hardly anyone heard of WorldCom before.
Turned out I was right.
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