WorldCom CFO Called Crafty Liar

A lawyer for ex-WorldCom Inc. Chief Executive Bernard J. Ebbers turned his closing argument Thursday into a blistering attack on star prosecution witness Scott D. Sullivan, calling him a crafty liar with Broadway-worthy acting skills.

In a final plea to jurors to acquit Ebbers of fraud, lawyer Reid Weingarten laid the blame for WorldCom’s massive accounting fraud squarely on Sullivan, who served as chief financial officer under Ebbers.

He portrayed Sullivan, who has pleaded guilty in the case, as a mastermind of fraud who blamed Ebbers only in hopes the government would help him win a lighter prison sentence.

“He was more rehearsed on his direct testimony than the actor who plays Hamlet on Broadway,” Weingarten said. “It’s hard to come up with a script where a witness has a greater motive to lie.”

Jurors are likely to begin deliberations this morning.

On Wednesday, a federal prosecutor suggested that money, power and pressure -- particularly $400 million in personal loans backed by WorldCom’s tumbling stock -- led Ebbers, 63, to commit fraud.

But Weingarten told jurors that as Bank of America issued one margin call after another on the loans because of the falling stock price, WorldCom stepped in to guarantee the loans, taking the pressure off the CEO.

If Ebbers had wanted to cook the books, Weingarten said, “the first thing you would do is dump your stock.” Ebbers did not sell, and even bought WorldCom stock after he resigned in April 2002. WorldCom later sought bankruptcy protection and emerged as MCI Inc.

He compared Sullivan’s zeal for falsifying the numbers to his admitted past use of cocaine.

In his rebuttal, prosecutor David Anders admitted Sullivan had lied in the past but said he had come clean.