Lessons from the Collapse of WorldCom
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
WorldCom went from a business success story to a major disaster when it filed for Chapter 11 in 2002 after accruing tens of billions of dollars in debt. Former vice president of WorldCom's internal audit department Cynthia Cooper gives an insider’s view of what brought down WorldCom, and how it relates to the current economic troubles in the US. Her new book is Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower.
Guests:
Cynthia Cooper
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Comments [3]
Not only did the crooks at Worldcom hurt their employees and shareholders, but they hurt the entire industry as AT&T and others were punished by Wall Street for not meeting Worldcom results. This lead to layoffs that could have been avoided.
I read the book "Stolen Without A Gun: Confessions from inside history's biggest accounting fraud - the collapse of MCI Worldcom"
Did Ms. Cooper know Walter Pavlo Jr. who worked at MCI?
This kind of dishonesty and regular people losing their pensions and jobs is not that exciting for news organizations and for prosecutors. Ebbers got very little time.
Unfortunately, dishonesty grows and spawns strife and even wars, and the war protesters miss this point, many times.
I think Worldcom simply and fraudulently changed its regular expenses into Capital Expenses to show it was investing in equipment ostensibly for future infrstructure and growth. Fraud like this and much worse happens all the time in politics and business.
Whistleblowers are seldom rewarded, and the salesmen and women who feed us the fraud rarely get what they deserve. What is going to change? Nada.
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