Word: worldcom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...showdown was scheduled for June 20. Cooper and a member of her team headed to Washington for an audit-committee meeting of WorldCom's board of directors. Sullivan would be there to present his side of the story. "We kept waiting up until the very end for Scott to pull a rabbit out of a hat," says a person close to the case. Relations had become so tense that at the last minute, when Cooper and her colleague learned that the management team was booked at the same hotel, they switched to another...
Sullivan refused to step down and was fired. Myers resigned. The next day, WorldCom came clean about its books. Cooper went directly to her parents' house and sat down at the table in stunned silence. It was an appropriate pausing place. Cooper attributes her endurance in the investigation to her mother. "She would say, 'Never allow yourself to be intimidated; always think about the consequences of your actions...
Never did Cooper imagine she would become the public face of the WorldCom audit. But in early July reporters showed up at her home and her parents' place in Clinton. Republican Congressman Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, had released her audit memos to the press, declaring, "This is Fraud 101." A WorldCom representative phoned her and said, "The press is calling, and they want to make you a hero." Cooper could not stomach the attention. "I'm not a hero. I'm just doing my job," she said. "There was nothing to celebrate...
Meanwhile, Cooper, a woman known as a perfectionist, was losing control over her domain at WorldCom. One day she walked into the office and found eight investigators perusing her files. All her phone and email messages are being collected, to this day. And she continues to cooperate with a steady stream of investigators, from the FBI to the Securities and Exchange Commission, says her attorney, Bob Muse...
...August, Sullivan was indicted on charges of securities fraud. He faces up to 65 years in prison. The California public-employees' retirement system--the largest state pension fund in the country--is suing to regain some of the $580 million it lost in the WorldCom debacle...