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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.
Ebbers himself took the witness stand late in the trial, insisting that he was unfamiliar with the details of accounting and knew nothing about the fraud taking place on his watch. The conviction completes a staggering fall for Ebbers, who took a small long-distance company in Mississippi and merged with or acquired ever-larger companies, earning him accolades and the nickname Telecom Cowboy. He still faces civil litigation, including from the company, which backed up his $400 million in personal loans when Bank of America demanded more and more collateral as the stock price fell. WorldCom, which was based in Clinton, Miss., was driven into bankruptcy - the largest in U.S. history - in the summer of 2002. It has since re-emerged as MCI Inc., based in Ashburn, Va. | 
