Episode Details

In this episode, we trace the meteoric rise of WorldCom, which began in a Mississippi coffee shop in 1983 under Bernard Ebbers and grew into a telecom empire through massive acquisitions like MCI. We uncover how the bursting of the dot-com bubble led executives to orchestrate an accounting scheme that fraudulently inflated the company's assets by approximately $11 billion. Listen in as we discuss the "Night Detective," internal auditor Cynthia Cooper, who worked secretly to expose the massive fraud. Finally, we examine the aftermath, including the company's 2002 filing for what was then the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history and its eventual acquisition by Verizon.