Bernard John Ebbers was born on August 27, 1941, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to John T. Ebbers, a traveling salesman and repairman, and Kathleen Mary Ebbers, a homemaker. During the 1940s, the family relocated to California before eventually settling in New Mexico. Ebbers attended a boarding school located on a Navajo reservation and later accepted a basketball scholarship to Mississippi College, a private Baptist institution in Clinton, Mississippi. He graduated in 1967 with a degree in physical education. Following graduation, he worked as a high school basketball coach and managed several motels.
Bernard Ebbers transformed a small Mississippi telecommunications company into a global powerhouse known as WorldCom. Originally called Long Distance Discount Services (LDDS), the company began as a modest reseller of long-distance telephone services. Under Ebbers' leadership, the company aggressively expanded through more than 60 mergers and acquisitions.
One of the most significant deals came in 1998, when WorldCom acquired MCI Communications for $37 billion—a move that stunned the telecommunications industry and nearly doubled the size of WorldCom. By 1999, the company employed over 80,000 people and had a market capitalization of approximately $180 billion, positioning it as a dominant force in the telecom sector.
Ebbers' business empire began to unravel in the early 2000s. In 2002, it was revealed that WorldCom had engaged in massive accounting fraud amounting to over $11 billion. The company had falsely inflated assets and misrepresented its financial condition in order to appear more profitable to investors and regulators.
During his 2005 trial, former executives and employees of WorldCom testified that Ebbers was aware of and encouraged the manipulation of financial statements. In July 2005, Ebbers was convicted of securities fraud, conspiracy, and filing false documents with regulators. He was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison, one of the harshest penalties ever handed down for white-collar crime in the U.S.
Citing severe and deteriorating health conditions, Ebbers was granted compassionate release from a Texas federal prison in December 2019. He had served approximately 13 years of his sentence.
Ebbers married Linda Pigott in 1968; the couple had four daughters: Ave Easley, Treasure Ebbers Beeson, Joy Ebbers Bourne, and Faith Ebbers Gates. The marriage ended in divorce in 1997. In 1999, he married Kristie Ebbers, with whom he later divorced in 2008. Ebbers was a grandfather to 12 grandchildren and had one great-grandson.
| Birth Date: | 27 Aug, 1941 |
| Age: | 78 yrs |
| Occupations: | Businessperson Entrepreneur |
| Citizenship: | Canada United States of America |
| Birth Place: | Edmonton |
| Education: | Calvin University Mississippi College |
| Gender: | Male |
| Description: | Canadian businessman and fraudster (1941-2020) |
| Net Worth 2020: | 1.4 billion |
