Brazen book-cooker Bernie Ebbers wept like a frightened child yesterday when he learned he’ll likely spend the rest of his life in prison for orchestrating the nation’s largest corporate fraud – a shameful $11 billion scam that crippled thousands of employees.
A judge yesterday slapped the corporate disgrace with a 25-year sentence, the harshest punishment in the recent spate of white-collar executive crimes. He will begin serving his term on Oct. 12.
The 63-year-old Ebbers – whose Mississippi drawl and hard-nosed business tactics once made him an admired chief executive in business circles – cried as Manhattan federal court Judge Barbara Jones dismissed nearly every plea for leniency before she handed down what may amount to a life sentence.
“A sentence of anything less would not seriously reflect the severity of this crime,” said Jones, who imposed the stiff term three years after the collapse of Ebbers’ WorldCom telecommunications giant.
While the sentence left many of his 10,000 former employees satisfied, it did nothing to replace the savings of loyal workers.
“My life was destroyed by the greed of Bernard Ebbers,” Henry Bruen, a former WorldCom salesman, told the court.
Standing just 10 feet from the man who essentially ruined his life, Bruen grumbled, “He can never repay me or the tens of thousands like me whose lives disintegrated in the blink of an eye.”
Bruen, 47, said hasn’t been able to find a job since he was laid off in 2003. Desperate and broke, Bruen, a former top WorldCom salesman, said he’s been forced to move back in with his parents in White Plains.
A sullen Ebbers focused straight ahead, seemingly unmoved by the words.
A once-ebullient executive known for glad-handing employees and investors declined to address the court yesterday, saying only “yes” when Jones asked him if he understood her instructions.
Ebbers also had no words for reporters when he entered the courthouse more than an hour before the sentencing, nor when he and his wife, Kristie, were whisked away hand-in-hand by U.S. marshals after the sentence was delivered.
The beaten man instead let his lawyers do the talking, and they poured it on thick.
“If you live 60-some-odd years, if you have an unblemished record, if you have endless numbers of people who attest to your goodness, doesn’t that count?” asked Ebbers lawyer Reid Weingarten.
The attorneys stressed the crime’s true mastermind was WorldCom’s finance chief Mark Sullivan and that Ebbers was guilty only of poor management.
Sullivan and other execs pleaded guilty, and are scheduled to be sentenced later in the summer.
Ebbers’ attorneys said their client never personally profited from the numbers he cooked to keep his company afloat.
But the judge invested nothing in that argument.
“He did exercise control and authority over his co-conspirators,” Jones said. “The jury heard evidence that he did instigate the fraud.”
Ebbers’ attorneys had also tried to argue that loss estimates were overstated, and urged the judge to consider Ebbers heart condition and charitable works on behalf of children. During one impassioned plea to the judge, one of his lawyers called Ebbers “an angel.”
Jones sentenced Ebbers to 25 years in prison, five years less than the maximum.
—
10 ways for Bernie Ebbers to pass the time before reporting to prison on Oct. 12: 10 ways for Bernie Ebbers to pass the time before reporting to prison on Oct. 12:
1) Read the Daily Snooze – it makes time go slower.
2) Call Fidel Castro and beg for asylum.
3) Practice fashioning a shiv out of an American Express black card.
4) Trade notes with Martha on recipes for food cooked on the radiator.
5) Lift weights – prison’s rough.
6) Strippers, strippers, strippers!
7) Sell the silverware the judge left for you.
8) Take up dice – the good golf handicap won’t be of much use anymore.
9) Harmonica lessons?
10) Write apology notes to the countless people you screwed over.