The Stakeholders In The Fraudulent Case Of Worldcom

Cynthia Cooper was contemplating over this whole debacle with what was the right decision to make with her discovering “almost four billion dollars in questionable accounting entries”. (Mead) While contemplating something crossed her mind on deciding if she should speak up and become known as a whistleblower, is that her findings could cost WorldCom’s credibility, about seventy thousand employees would lose their jobs, and also pension funds that were loaded with WorldCom stock. Her job as an internal auditor she had a responsibility to WorldCom’s Stockholders and also her own conscious to do something like as the fraud that was uncovered was so

Mr. Jeffrey Skilling was one of three executives at Enron Corporation that were indicted for manipulating financials to show the public inflated numbers about Enron’s profitability. By showing these numbers to the public they were trying to mislead the public into thinking the company was more profitable than it really was. Mr. Jeffrey Skilling was convicted by a Texas federal district court of conspiracy, securities fraud, making false representations to auditors, and insider trading. Mr. Skilling had been the C.E.O. of Enron Corp. Mr. Skilling appealed, he argued he was prosecuted by the government under an invalid legal theory and that the jury he had was biased.

WorldCom and The Mississippi Scheme are both large financial scandals that have occurred. WorldCom was a telecommunication company that overstated their cash flow by reporting $7.6 billion in operating expenses as capital expenses. WorldCom is the largest accounting scandal in US history as of March 2002. The Mississippi Scheme was a business scheme that destroyed the economy of France during the 1700’s. The scheme involved the loss of paper money’s purchasing power as a result of asset inflation. Both WorldCom and The Mississippi Scheme were frauds involving manipulation to create higher stock prices and dubious practices within the organizations to keep the public unaware.

The article entitled “Ebers is sentenced to 25 years for $11 Billion WorldCom fraud” and written by Searcey, D., Young, S., & Scannell, K. focuses on the biggest business fraud in the history of the United States. Mr. Bernard J. Ebbers, the 63 years old, founder and CEO of WorldCom Inc. corrupted the company through a shrewd way. He falsified boosted profits by making operating expenses as capital spending to meet Wall Street expectation and attract investors. In 2002, the company collapsed and Mr. Bernard J. Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years for 11 billion as a fraud. I plan to use this article to show the negative impact of business fraud on both corporations as the company collapsed and individuals as the CEO of the company was sentenced

List 5 key stakeholders affected by the collapse of Enron? Explain briefly how each stakeholder was affected.

This leads into my second pressure, which deals with personal lives. Employees were receiving tremendous benefits due to the company’s great performance. However, if the company did not improve, people’s salaries would be cut or even worse, their jobs would be cut. That is why so many people were willing to engage in the fraud, because they felt WorldCom was supplying a salary and benefits that other companies would not be able to match. Betty Vinson was a prime example. She knew that releasing line accruals was wrong, but needed to

Due to these criminal activities, many top executives were convicted fraud and sentenced to spend time in prison. WorldCom activities did not align with the company's overall mission and goals. The actions taken by management were not in the best interest of the customer instead they were consumed with acquisitions and increasing the value of WorldCom Shares. The management also should have considered general accounting practices during their strategic planning. Furthermore, create procedures that protect all stakeholders within the firm.

On March 15, 2005 former CEO of WorldCom, Bernard Ebbers sat in a federal courtroom waiting for the verdict. As the former CEO of WorldCom, Ebbers was accused of being personally responsible for the financial destruction of the communications giant. An internal investigation had uncovered $11 billion dollars in fraudulent accounting practices. Later a second report in 2003 found that during Ebber’s 2001 tenure as CEO, the company had over-reported earnings and understated expenses by an astonishing $74.5 billion dollars (Martin, 2005, para 3). This report included the mismanagement of funds, unethical lending practices among its top executives, and false bookkeeping which led to loss of tens of thousands of its employees.

Rule based accounting standards are difference from principle based standards in that rule based standards are just that – rules. For instance, the Internal Revenue code is rule based. There are things you can do and things you can’t. When rules are broken,

WorldCom was the ultimate success story among telecommunications companies. Bernard Ebbers took the reigns as CEO in 1985 and turned the company into a highly profitable one, at least on the outside. In 2002, Ebbers resigned, WorldCom admitted fraud and the company declared bankruptcy (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, &Wright 2007). The company was at the heart of one of the biggest accounting frauds seen in the United States. The demise of this telecommunications monster can be accredited to many factors including their aggressive-defensive organizational culture based on power and the bullying tactics that they employed. However, this fiasco could have been prevented if WorldCom had designed a system of checks and balances that would have

This deception on behalf of the executives and others in the organization who hid this vastly affected anyone who had stock in Enron as well as stock in other energy corporations. The

P., & Coulter, M. K., 2012, p. 152), although it seems none of WorldCom’s executive management team seemed to feel this way. Many steps could have been taken to prevent the collapse of the WorldCom empire, but only a few key managers held the power and none were willing to take action. One control that did not exist in WorldCom’s culture was allowing both internal and external auditors access to all necessary documents and statements. Without full disclosure of these items no one could see how many risks the company was taking by making fraudulent entries against their books. Also the external audit team, Arthur Anderson, held WorldCom as one of its best customers which was a major conflict of interest. This relationship lead to many fundamental mistakes from Anderson not keeping pressure on WorldCom and getting all vital information that would prove how poorly the company was being run. Had they been operating transparently, auditors and employees would have seen the accounting deception and could potentially have stopped it prior to the company’s collapse. In addition, by employing multiple auditing firms many of the mistakes being made may have been caught and discontinued from the beginning.

Please read the Enron cases posted on blackboard and the one in your book then answer the following questions based upon the case and Chapter 9. Make sure that your answers are supported by the facts of the case and the concepts you learned from Chapter 5. Please rely only on the case/chapter 9 to answer the questions except for question # 12—requires outside search.

WorldCom acquired Arthur Andersen as the independent external auditing for the company. As WorldCom grew after the merger with MCI, Andersen began to invoice less than they should have. The charges were defended as an opportunity to prolong business with WorldCom. (Kaplan and Kiron, 2007). This is an immediate red flag for a company. Where were the ethical practices of the independent auditor? If the auditor has no ethics, how can one possibly be assured that the company is performing its intended function appropriately? The board of directors should have immediately been informed of Andersen’s practices and made a decision to confront Andersen’s practices and possibly obtain new independent auditors.

There were several people responsible for the WorldCom scandal, as well as, whistleblowers that first discovered the accounting fraud. The former CEO, Bernard Ebbers was found to be the main offender of the fraud. He did it by capitalizing inflated revenues with phony accounting entries and he was eventually sentenced to 25-years for fraud, conspiracy and filing false documents with regulators. Scott Sullivan, the former CFO, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and was sentenced to 5-years after testifying against Bernard Ebbers. The former Director of General Accounting, David Myers, pleaded guilty to