Scott D. Sullivan is the former chief financial officer, secretary, treasurer, and a board member of WorldCom, who was convicted as part of WorldCom's $3.8 billion accounting fraud, at the time the largest scandal of its kind in U.S. history.
Sullivan attended Bethlehem Central High School in Delmar, New York. He graduated from the State University of New York at Oswego in 1983, and was awarded the Anniversary Class Award for alumni in 1998. [1]
Sullivan was CFO, treasurer and secretary of WorldCom from December 1994 to December 2002, and was its executive vice president from April 2002. [2] During this time, he put on ostentatious displays of wealth, including building a 24,000 sq ft (2,200 m2) mansion in Boca Raton, Florida. [3]
In 2002, WorldCom learned of improper accounting at the company. Sullivan was asked to resign by the company's board of directors; he refused, and was fired. [4] In August of that year, Sullivan was arrested and charged with seven counts related to fraud at WorldCom. [5]
Sullivan entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to five years in prison as part of a plea agreement in which Sullivan testified against former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers, [6] who received a 25-year sentence (the maximum sentence that Sullivan could have received if he had not accepted the plea agreement and was found guilty).
Sullivan was released from jail in August 2009, after serving four years of his sentence. He was required to be on home confinement for another three years. He returned to Boca Raton, but not to his mansion, which had been sold. [3]
Andrew Stuart Fastow is an American convicted felon and former financier who was the chief financial officer of Enron Corporation, an energy trading company based in Houston, Texas, until he was fired shortly before the company declared bankruptcy. Fastow was one of the key figures behind the complex web of off-balance-sheet special purpose entities used to conceal Enron's massive losses in their quarterly balance sheets. By unlawfully maintaining personal stakes in these ostensibly independent ghost-entities, he was able to defraud Enron out of tens of millions of dollars.
MCI, Inc. was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second-largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. WorldCom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunications companies, including MCI Communications in 1998, and filed for bankruptcy in 2002 after an accounting scandal, in which several executives, including CEO Bernard Ebbers, were convicted of a scheme to inflate the company's assets. In January 2006, the company, by then renamed MCI, was acquired by Verizon Communications and was later integrated into Verizon Business.
Kevin David Mitnick was an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker. He is best known for his high-profile 1995 arrest and five years in prison for various computer and communications-related crimes. Mitnick's pursuit, arrest, trial and sentence were all controversial, as were the associated media coverage, books and films. After his release from prison, he ran his own security firm, Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC, and was also involved with other computer security businesses.
Barry Jay Minkow is a former American businessman, pastor, and convicted felon. While still in high school, Minkow founded ZZZZ Best, which appeared to be an immensely successful carpet-cleaning and restoration company. However, it was actually a front to attract investment for a massive Ponzi scheme. ZZZZ Best collapsed in 1987, costing investors and lenders $100 million in one of the largest investment frauds ever perpetrated by a single person, as well as one of the largest accounting frauds in history. The scheme is often used as a case study of accounting fraud.
Bernard John Ebbers was a Canadian-American businessman and the co-founder and CEO of WorldCom. Under his management, WorldCom grew rapidly but collapsed in 2002 amid revelations of accounting irregularities, making it at the time one of the largest accounting scandals in the United States. Ebbers blamed his subordinates but was convicted of fraud and conspiracy. In December 2019, Ebbers was released from Federal Medical Center, Fort Worth, due to declining health, having served 13 years of his 25-year sentence, and he died just over a month later.
Leo Dennis Kozlowski is a former CEO of Tyco International, convicted in 2005 of crimes related to his receipt of $81 million in unauthorized bonuses, the purchase of art for $14.725 million and the payment by Tyco of a $20 million investment banking fee to Frank Walsh, a former Tyco director.
Sholam Weiss is an American convicted fraudster.
Joseph Salvatore "Skinny Joey" Merlino is an American former mobster who was the reputed boss of the Philadelphia crime family from the 1990s until 2024. He rose to power and seized control of the organization in the mid-nineties after he fought against the John Stanfa faction of the family. He has led the crime family in gambling, loan sharking, drug trafficking, and extortion. In comparison to other traditional mob bosses who shunned the limelight, Merlino has interacted regularly with the media and the public, often openly providing charity and hosting events to benefit indigent people in Philadelphia, drawing comparisons to the similarly outgoing, conspicuous, and ostensibly charitable late New York crime boss John Gotti. He is the son of deceased Philadelphia crime family underboss Chuckie Merlino.
Taylor, Bean & Whitaker was a top-10 wholesale mortgage lending firm in the United States, the fifth-largest issuer of Government National Mortgage Association securities. Their slogan was "Perfecting the Art of Mortgage Lending".
David G. Friehling is an American accountant who was arrested and charged in March 2009 for his role in the Madoff investment scandal. He subsequently pleaded guilty to rubber-stamping Bernard Madoff's filings with regulators rather than fully reviewing them. His role in covering up Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme makes it the largest accounting fraud in history.
Participants in the Madoff investment scandal included employees of Bernard Madoff's investment firm with specific knowledge of the Ponzi scheme, a three-person accounting firm that assembled his reports, and a network of feeder funds that invested their clients' money with Madoff while collecting significant fees. Madoff avoided most direct financial scrutiny by accepting investments only through these feeder funds, while obtaining false auditing statements for his firm. The liquidation trustee of Madoff's firm has implicated managers of the feeder funds for ignoring signs of Madoff's deception.
Daniel Mark Porush is an American businessman, former stock broker and convicted criminal who helped run a pump and dump stock fraud scheme in the 1990s at the Stratton Oakmont brokerage in collaboration with Jordan Belfort. In 1999, he was convicted of securities fraud and money laundering, for which he served 39 months in prison. After prison, Porush became involved with a Florida-based medical supply company, Med-Care, which was the subject of federal investigations. In the biographical 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street, which focuses on the story of Belfort and Stratton Oakmont, Jonah Hill portrays Donnie Azoff, a character loosely based on Porush. Porush has called the portrayal inaccurate and threatened to sue the filmmakers to prevent him from being depicted.
The WorldCom scandal was a major accounting scandal that came into light in the summer of 2002 at WorldCom, the USA's second-largest long-distance telephone company at the time. From 1999 to 2002, senior executives at WorldCom led by founder and CEO Bernard Ebbers orchestrated a scheme to inflate earnings in order to maintain WorldCom's stock price.
Andrew W.W. Caspersen is an American financier and formerly a partner and managing director at PJT Partners Inc.'s Park Hill Group.
Richard William Gates III is an American former political consultant and lobbyist who pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States for making false statements in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. He is a longtime business associate of Paul Manafort and served as deputy to Manafort when the latter was campaign manager of the Donald Trump presidential campaign in 2016, and after under Kellyanne Conway.
The two criminal trials of Paul Manafort were the first cases brought to trial by the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Manafort served as campaign chair for the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign from June 20 to August 19, 2016. In July 2017, the FBI conducted a raid of Manafort's home, authorized by search warrant under charges of interference in the 2016 election. Manafort and his business assistant Rick Gates were both indicted and arrested in October 2017 for charges of conspiracy against the United States, making false statements, money laundering, and failing to register as foreign agents for Ukraine. Gates entered a plea bargain in February 2018.
The Special Counsel investigation was a United States law enforcement and counterintelligence investigation of the Russian government's efforts to interfere in United States politics and any possible involvement by members of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. It was primarily focused on the 2016 presidential election.