WorldCom news, etc.

Okay, so I'm the only file clerk at work this entire week, so don't expect too much blogging out of me, my sincerererest apologies. Anyhow, if you haven't heard, Bernard Ebbers (CEO of WorldCom) was found guilty of accounting fraud, false SEC filings, etc:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Bernard Ebbers, who built WorldCom from a humble Mississippi long-distance firm into a telecommunications titan, was convicted Tuesday of engineering the colossal accounting fraud that sank the company.

A federal jury in Manhattan deliberated eight days before returning guilty verdicts on one count of conspiracy, one count of securities fraud and seven counts of false regulatory filings -- crimes carrying up to 85 years in prison.

The conviction comes more than two years after an internal auditor began asking questions about curious accounting at WorldCom, touching off a scandal that eventually unearthed $11 billion in cooked books.

Prosecution testimony at the six-week trial portrayed Ebbers, 63, as obsessed with keeping WorldCom's stock price high, panicked about $400 million in personal loan that were backed by his shares in the company.

And on a related note, since it's payday I'm considering buying these, but 10 bucks for a deck of cards seems like a scam in and of itself...