Bernie Ebbers: the downfall of the Telecom Cowboy

Bernie Ebbers had the starring role in the greatest rags-to-riches story in US corporate history. A plot twist at the end turned it into a different kind of morality tale.

(Image credit: Corbis via Getty Images)

When Bernie Ebbers’ former company, Worldcom, was on the brink of collapse in 2002, the deeply religious telecoms tycoon put in an appearance at his local Baptist church in Mississippi where he regularly attended services and taught Sunday school. Ebbers, who died this week aged 78, loudly assured the congregation that “you aren’t going to church with a crook”, notes Reuters. A federal jury in Manhattan thought otherwise – finding him guilty of orchestrating an $11bn accounting fraud – and the “Telecom Cowboy” was sent down for 25 years.

From milkman to titan

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.