David Myers, a former Worldcom executive who served 11 months in prison after being convicted of fraud, received a $7.5 million loan that was guaranteed by the federal government with money from the 2009 stimulus.
Worldcom filed the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. history 2002, after three years of “falsely professing financial growth and profitability to increase the price of WorldCom’s stock.” As Worldcom controller, Myers was one of the three executives most intimately involved in perpetrating the fraud, which exaggerated that company’s value by $11 billion.
Myers was sentenced to a lighter sentence – year and a day in prison — than his cohorts “because of his extraordinary cooperation with the government and his early admission of responsibility and remorse.”
His loan was guaranteed as part of the USDA’s rural development program. “The borrower demonstrated strong repayment ability, sufficient security for the loan and the loan saved jobs and helped meet the tremendous need for health care in rural Mississippi,” the USDA told Bloomberg, which reported on the loan.
Myers was eligible to receive the loan because his felony conviction came more than two years ago. “I understand what the costs of my actions were to me personally, to my family, to the people that invested in WorldCom,” Myers told Bloomberg. “I can never allow something like that to ever happen again.”
