I am going to have to disagree with the good people at Talk Left on this one:
WorldCom former exec Bernie Ebbers, 63 has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud. (Note: CNBC which first reported the sentence said 30 years, but later articles are saying 25, so I’ve changed it.)
This is a ridiculous sentence for a non-violent crime. The judge may have well as imposed the 85 years sought by the government – both are an effective life sentence.
I doubt he’ll go to a federal prison camp on a 30 year sentence. To put a 63 year old, first offender behind the walls at a medium security prison for an economic crime is cruel. Hopefully, he’ll be sent to a medical facility.
Let’s remember what Ebbers did:
As WorldCom’s chairman and chief executive, Mr. Ebbers was accused of orchestrating the largest corporate fraud in United States history, an accounting scheme that inflated the company’s profits by $11 billion over a handful of years.
The deception topped a wave of corporate scandals that devastated investors and prompted lawsuits and legislative reforms. Executives at several companies have gone to trial in the last year, with mixed results, and some are still waiting.
While it is technically true that no physical violence took place, there is no way to calculate the extent of the damage inflicted on ordinary citizens by this type of greed and fraud. It is probably a safe estimate to state that thousands of people had their lives ruined, pitched into economic insecurity and crisis, because of the actions of Mr. Ebbers and his cohort of thieves.
I, like Jeralynn, am displeased with the current status of the United States as incarceration nation, but what Mr. Ebbers did was inexcusable, flatly evil, and while not physical violence, a violence of sorts and an assault on the American public. He can rot in a low security prison until the end of his days, for all I care. Sorry.
Jeff Altemus
I’m with you 100% on this one. There’s no good reason a white collar crook should get any less punishment than some creep who mugs an old lady on the street. Especially given the scope of his crimes.
erez
Why are you sorry? I hope he rots without daylight in a dog housed size cell for 25 years. And I am not sorry if anyone disagrees.
Frank
I’d prefer a harsher sentence, but this is pretty good.
Wrye
I have to agree. Ebbers is many things, but a poster-child for the over-sentenced he is not.
It’s difficult to concieve of white collar crime on a greater scale than this, frankly. (That doesn’t involve outright treason…)
Jeff Altemus
I’m with you 100% on this one. There’s no good reason a white collar crook should get any less punishment than some creep who mugs an old lady on the street. Especially given the scope of his crimes.
p.lukasiak
Bravo….
I think that if you were to ask most people whether they’d rather lose their life savings, or have someone beat the crap out of them, they’d go with the beating. (at least I know I would).
jcricket
I’m with you 100% John. Ebbers actions resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and decimated the 401ks of many Worldcom employees. Why should he get some kind of measly penalty and suspended sentence? For the same reason that it took billion dollar verdicts to get the asbestos and tobacco companies to change their behavior, it will take outsized punishments like this to get CEOs to take responsibility for creating a culture of honesty in their companies.
If CEOs are going to demand massive paychecks, stock grants and other bonuses that end up being 100s of times the average employees salary, then they are 100s of times as responsible when the entire company
The rest of us (e.g. working folk) end up holding the bag, so Ebbers (and the Rigases and Ken Lay) deserve every day in jail and every penny they’ve ever fraudelently earned taken from them.
jcricket
oops, add “is corrupt” to the end of “entire company”. Basically, CEOs can’t take all of the credit and none of the blame. They already get enough of that type of “out” with the whole “golden parachute” nonsense.
Mike S
While it is technically true that no physical violence took place, there is no way to calculate the extent of the damage inflicted on ordinary citizens by this type of greed and fraud. It is probably a safe estimate to state that thousands of people had their lives ruined, pitched into economic insecurity and crisis, because of the actions of Mr. Ebbers and his cohort of thieves.
Dead on. He is a dispicable man and deserves everything he gets and more. Pension funds and life savings were worthless over night. I’d be willing to bet that a few people committed suicide so I’m not even willing to sign onto the non violent part of their argument.
Defense Guy
Actually you can leave violence right out of the equation and compare it with the car thief. If you steal a car, you can be sentenced to 10-15 years and that only affects the person whose car was stolen. This affects a far wider number of people, so 25 years is a light sentence IMO.
ET
It is such a load of crap that just because there was no violence that 25 years was to heavy a sentence. Attitudes like that hack me off. White collar crime has implications far beyond what most people can easily see or can be written about in some news article.
The scope of the crime and the number of victims alone would warrant that sentence.
Don’t even get me started on the “but it’s not a deterrence” line that seems to be out there. I don’t know if it was supposed to be a deterrence but it was punishment for crimes committed.
ET
It is such a load of crap that just because there was no violence that 25 years was to heavy a sentence. Attitudes like that hack me off. White collar crime has implications far beyond what most people can easily see or can be written about in some news article.
The scope of the crime and the number of victims alone would warrant that sentence.
Don’t even get me started on the “but it’s not a deterrence” line that seems to be out there. I don’t know if it was supposed to be a deterrence but it was punishment for crimes committed.
Don
I don’t think you could put it more succinctly than p.lukasiak did, and in this case it’s a comparison between one beating and hundreds of thousands of life savings. I think TalkLeft got confused about the difference between ‘non-violent’ and ‘victimless.’
Tony Alva
This guy has effectively ruined many a retired workers lives with his greed. I know many fromer MCI/Worldcom employees who would told me long before any of this story broke that the guy was a capital size jackass and treated employees like crap. Let him rot…
Anderson
25 years is good. Down here in Jackson, MS, I think most people know somebody who lost a job due to Ebbers’s crime.
It’s long appalled me that people can hide behind corporate veils and pathetic excuses (“I was only the CEO!”). 25 years should be the minimum sentence for those who commit crimes like Ebbers’s.
Tulie
I agree with you, John. I found it refreshing to see this type of crime actually punished, for a change. While I don’t know anyone affected by Ebbers, I know several people, including my father, affected by the Enron impolsion.
Mr Furious
I heard in the morning before sentencing that he could get up to 85 years, but his lawyer was hoping for 6-10.
“That fucker should die in prison, give him the whole 85 on the off chance he lives to be 120!” was pretty much what I blurted back to the radio.
The fact that people like Ebbers are conditioned to think escapades like this are worth the risk because if they ever got caught, all they’d do is 8 years in a country club prison is an abomination. Hmm…$800 million dollars and a slim chance I’ll do time? I like those odds.
Wrong. You are going to die in a real fucking prison and never get to spend a dime of that money if you get caught. How do you like those odds?
BTW, this makes me a hundred times more furious than almost anything else I can think of right now. I can barely type.
Christie S.
Good riddance to shitty rubbish. If there is a God, Ebbers will be cellmates with Ken Lay.
arkabee
The scope of his crime boggles my mind.
60 seconds by 60 minutes by 24 hours by 365 days x 25 years=
788,400,000
he wouldn’t even be able to count to a billion in that time, let alone count the money he lied about.
“first offender”. shouldn’t that be “first conviction”?
certainly, if i were to be convicted of something, i would not want someone to assume that i had done other things as well and simply not been caught. i know i should not judge him,
but,
how do you lie about 11 billion dollars? i feel guilting thinking i might round my dinner bill down before doing the tip calculation in my head!
Brandon
Sorry, but when we have rapists who are only getting 14-year sentences behind bars, I have to think giving somebody like Bernie Ebbers 25-years in the pen is a little extreme.
Sure, he should pay his debt to society for breaking the law. But 25 years?
Bob
Will Ebbers get a dogcollar and leash?
It’s always been that you kill more people with a pen than a gun.
And you don’t kill anyone with a joint.
Nathan Lanier
The only way to deter white collar crime is with severe consequences. Why? Because fear responds to trepidation.
Let him rot.
Nathan Lanier
I meant to say “greed” in place of fear…
carot
If Ebbers deserves 25 years then why do virus writers get such small sentences? The writer of the Sasser worm caused over 10 billion in damages and got off with community service. Both caused about the same damage to the economy. If anything Ebbers was better as his company did a lot of good as well, the Sasser worm did no good to anyone.
Mr Furious
Is the Sasser worm writer the 15-year-old that was sentenced last week in Germany? First, can someone explain the $10 billion in damages from that? Sounds like “billions” in hypotheticals–insurance coverage for some, “lost time and income”, down productivity”, etc. Seriously, I want to know.
Second, a computer prank by a kid stems from, and represents, something different than the greedy plot of a sixty year old executive actually stealing billions of dollars from regular people and ruining their lives for his own personal gain. At such a scale that he literally could not burn all of that money before he and everyone he knows, dies.
Of course I think there needs to be a much harsher sentence for crimes like the Sasser worm to serve as a deterrent (and I believe in deterrence, unlike many liberals), but please don’t try to equate these crimes, and certainly do not give Ebbers ANY credit for ANYTHING. He is a straight-up fucking crook.