NEW YORK, July 13: Bernard Ebbers, the folksy entrepreneur who built WorldCom Inc into a telecommunications giant, was sentenced on Wednesday to 25 years in prison for his role in the business fraud that led to the largest US corporate bankruptcy.
The sentence means Mr Ebbers, 63, could spend the rest of his life in prison.
In imposing the lengthy prison term, Judge Barbara Jones of US District Court in Manhattan rejected defence attorneys’ arguments that the government overstated the losses that investors suffered in the fraud, as well as contentions that the former WorldCom chief executive was not a mastermind of the wrongdoing.
Mr Ebbers ‘was clearly a leader of criminal activity in this case’, the judge said.
The one-time milkman and high school sports coach sat silently when the sentence was announced and did not make any statements at the hearing. Afterward, he stood up and hugged his wife, both teary-eyed. He then stood by himself with his head bowed and hands grasping the back of his chair for more than a minute.
While the judge calculated that discretionary sentencing guidelines called for a prison term of 30 years to life, she modified Ebbers’ sentence to 25 years, citing factors such as his good works in the community.
“It’s hard to find a white-collar case that really compares with the sentence we’ve seen here,” said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor who now is a partner at law firm McCarter & English. The punishment sends ‘a chilling message that people who engage in this type of large-scale fraud are likely to find themselves facing sentences that in the past had been reserved for perpetrators of violent crimes’.—Reuters
NEW YORK, July 13: Bernard Ebbers, the folksy entrepreneur who built WorldCom Inc into a telecommunications giant, was sentenced on Wednesday to 25 years in prison for his role in the business fraud that led to the largest US corporate bankruptcy.
