WorldCom scandal

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The WorldCom scandal was a major accounting scandal discovered in June 2002 at WorldCom, then the second-largest long-distance telephone company in the United States. Between 1999 and 2002, senior executives led by founder and CEO Bernard Ebbers engaged in accounting fraud to inflate earnings and maintain the company's stock price. The fraud was discovered by the company's internal audit unit under Vice President Cynthia Cooper, who identified over $3.8 billion in fraudulent balance sheet entries. Subsequent investigations revealed that WorldCom had overstated its assets by over $11 billion, making it the largest accounting fraud in American history at that time. WorldCom filed for bankruptcy in July 2002 and CEO Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2005.

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