Bernie Ebbers, the former WorldCom billionaire who was convicted in one of the biggest ever U.S. accounting scandals, has died at age 78, his family has reportedly confirmed. Ebbers transformed WorldCom into a telecommunications giant through a string of acquisitions, but his reputation was ruined in 2002 after an $11 billion accounting fraud was exposed. Former employees accused Ebbers of instructing them to inflate WorldCom’s financial results to make the company appear to be more profitable, and he was convicted in March 2005 for orchestrating the fraud. He was granted a compassionate release from prison in December 2019, after he had served 13 years of a 25-year sentence, due to deteriorating health. His family said in a statement that he died “surrounded by his loving family, and not chained to a hospital bed without anyone he knew in the room.” Ebbers always denied he was at fault, saying his subordinates concealed the company’s costs.
