The WorldCom Scandal - The Full Story | Lies, Expenses, and Accounting | History in the Dark

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ม.ค. 2025

ความคิดเห็น • 113

  • @tonyplaysthemambo
    @tonyplaysthemambo 3 หลายเดือนก่อน +54

    As the daughter of a CPA, you never want an accountant or auditor to leave you on read. It probably means you're going to jail.

  • @MN-zi6hb
    @MN-zi6hb 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +138

    Credit to the Audit team for holding their ground to get to the truth.

  • @toribug1899
    @toribug1899 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +47

    Got ‘algorithm-ed’ the Radio Shack video over the long weekend and I’ve been making my way through the rest. Went ahead and subbed, good work

    • @XchampionXFTW
      @XchampionXFTW 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      Me too lol

    • @phonkyfeel1
      @phonkyfeel1 29 วันที่ผ่านมา

      Don LaPre was my first. 🤣🤣 Had a great time and some laughs!!

  • @SunnySky-
    @SunnySky- 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +70

    That audit team is the dream team i love that she left him unanswered.

  • @tgamron
    @tgamron 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +27

    I used to work for WorldCon. I was there during the bankruptcy. What a mess.

  • @TheGs4_4449
    @TheGs4_4449 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +77

    I’d never in my life expect too hear Darkness say “that’s pretty sus”, nor I’d expect him to have a family guy clip/meme in his video to use as an example
    I love it

    • @ALCO-C855-fan
      @ALCO-C855-fan 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      Yep. Also 3.8 billion DOLLARS?!?!?!
      You could as well restore all Y6b's with that!!!

    • @TheGs4_4449
      @TheGs4_4449 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      @@ALCO-C855-fan Yep!

    • @ALCO-C855-fan
      @ALCO-C855-fan 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      @@TheGs4_4449 Aren't you that S1 guy from DA?

    • @TheGs4_4449
      @TheGs4_4449 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      @@ALCO-C855-fan …you mean the one on r/trainmemes? Yes

    • @ALCO-C855-fan
      @ALCO-C855-fan 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      @@TheGs4_4449 I mean don't I know you from DeviantArt?

  • @truthwithes6690
    @truthwithes6690 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +22

    Internal team was awesome. Cooper was like hell no not on my watch. She wasn't going down.

    • @GregBartlesbyProductions
      @GregBartlesbyProductions 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +8

      Her book/autobio is good. Was required reading for my cost actg class.

  • @concernedcitizen9466
    @concernedcitizen9466 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +14

    Towards the end of that corp drama, I caught them double billing me.

  • @Billblom
    @Billblom 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +42

    And you can't miss the rail connection with one of the biggies: Sprint. Formed when Southern Pacific's signal system had excess capacity due to use of Fiber, rather than old style copper.... It was named "Sprint" to imply Fast, and folk Southern Pacifc into the name.....

    • @alexhajnal107
      @alexhajnal107 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

      The name was originally an acronym for Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Networking Telephony.
      Edit: The name was selected via a contest when the subsidiary was shifting its focus from internal railroad operations to the commercial market and decided a rebrand was in order.

    • @Billblom
      @Billblom 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      @@alexhajnal107 Yup. and implied fast... after all the competition was all on Microwave for long lines. The big problem for Sprint: since it was under their track, it only was really available near the ROW for the first several years. Having it as an alternate Long Distance backbone was great competition for AT&T

    • @RT-qd8yl
      @RT-qd8yl 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@alexhajnal107 Or was that a backronym?

    • @alexhajnal107
      @alexhajnal107 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@RT-qd8yl AFAIK it wasn't a backronym.

    • @LordMarcus
      @LordMarcus 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      My dad had an outsized hand implementing all that fiber.

  • @michaelsullivan2361
    @michaelsullivan2361 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +20

    You should do an analysis of Global Crossing & Gary Winnick.
    I had the displeasure of being a cog in that machine.

    • @I_Am_Your_Problem
      @I_Am_Your_Problem 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

      Enron, Worldcom, Qwest, Global Crossing, Dynegy, Tellium.

  • @ethancampbell5373
    @ethancampbell5373 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +11

    Loved the video! Hope you can afford to upgrade the microphone quality soon! It’s not terrible but I think the video itself was really put together well and the increased quality of the microphone would put this video and the others over the top!

  • @alexhajnal107
    @alexhajnal107 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +19

    Yes, quite impressive, the fraud, the determined investigator, and the video.
    On a related note, you might be interested in looking in to Nick Leeson and the downfall of Barings Bank.

  • @Grnfinger
    @Grnfinger 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    James Garner, I remember him pitching for MCI back in the day. ahh nostalgia.

  • @ad6417
    @ad6417 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    My husband worked at the MCI World Com data center in Napa California. When EDS bought them out one of the things that they found during the audit was people had excessive amounts of comp time. There was one guy that my husband worked with who was having an affair with a woman from HR and she had logged nearly a year of comp time for him in their payroll system. Of course it all came out during the EDS audit and they were both fired.

  • @ALCO-C855-fan
    @ALCO-C855-fan 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +28

    Founded in 1985. Like ENRON. What a curse...

    • @williampetry
      @williampetry 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      Same year I was founded (born). Curse indeed, can confirm

    • @ALCO-C855-fan
      @ALCO-C855-fan 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      @@williampetry XD!!! Good response there!And after Enron and Worldcom comes PennCentral, the WORST bancruptcy in railroad history. Hopefully unsurpassable.

  • @ALCO-C855-fan
    @ALCO-C855-fan 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +12

    3.8 billion DOLLARS?!?!?!
    You could as well restore all Y6b's with that!!!

  • @bhermsworld7493
    @bhermsworld7493 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    Wow really digging this channel 🔥 great vids 💯. You got a new fan for sure 😊

  • @imperial_corner
    @imperial_corner 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +11

    "Stop it, get some help."

  • @tonycrabtree3416
    @tonycrabtree3416 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    The prepaid capacity was writing off of income from long distance packages as a cost, but they also captured it as income.

  • @Straswa
    @Straswa 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    Great work Darkness. Glad to hear the Audit team held their ground and brought the wrong-doing to light.

  • @TerryWhisk
    @TerryWhisk 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

    You can fix the awful audio quality by spending more then $40 on a mic. This sounds like you recorded it into a phone’s memo app

  • @dcooper1535
    @dcooper1535 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

    Castle Bank & Trust in the Bahamas was the classic offshore bank account scam, losing many people - including noteworthy celebrities - a lot of money.

  • @pkat
    @pkat 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +12

    Nice! But this barely makes the top 10 business frauds in US history. How about
    FTX
    Theranos
    Ivan Boesky
    Bernie Madoff
    Wells Fargo

    • @JamesAllmond
      @JamesAllmond 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      This was before all those thieves (except may be Madoff who was just s con man) and the reason for SOX laws...
      that were supposed to prevent those thieves and eventually caught them...and has made life miserable for anyone in IT or Accounting working for large companies in the US...

    • @michaelmoses8745
      @michaelmoses8745 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      The guy will probably get there eventually. I shudder to think about understanding all the documents in the bankruptcy. There's quite a lot of them.

    • @ashligobert9195
      @ashligobert9195 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@JamesAllmondbut like I tell me team, us accountants will always have a job 😂

  • @jvbutalid8316
    @jvbutalid8316 9 วันที่ผ่านมา

    capital expense is like when a farmer buys a cow so he could continue to have milk to sell, or a storeowner setting up a store where he sells stuff in, or a printing shop buying a printer they'll use to print stuff. it's when you buy stuff that's essentially the core moneymaking part of the business

  • @hrtvfan2870
    @hrtvfan2870 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

    And the great irony in the proposed MCI Worldcom merger with Sprint is that had it gone through, it could have been a monopoly akin to Ma Bell-era AT&T when MCI was the upstart attempting to get AT&T broken up.

  • @awesomesauce8083
    @awesomesauce8083 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    I knew a lot of good people who worked for worldcom, who didn't deserve this.

  • @andrewbowen4544
    @andrewbowen4544 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +7

    Darkness you've done Penn Central, Enron, Blockbuster now WorldCom what about PanAm

  • @RichardBaran
    @RichardBaran 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    "and that was weird and not normal" idk why but that line made me laugh.

  • @andrewkaye2108
    @andrewkaye2108 3 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Good for Kim Ami, for not wanting to committ fraud and escaping that mess

  • @manicmechanic448
    @manicmechanic448 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +6

    The math didn't math.

  • @ederorellana9919
    @ederorellana9919 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Billions of dollars in fraud and some of them only did a year in jail. I know guys that got more for a joint. It’s ridiculous.

  • @FD2003Abc
    @FD2003Abc 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Once a company goes public it is required by the SEC to employ an external auditor. As of the Enrol scandal, the company cannot employ their audit form for IT consulting services (except for some very narrow exceptions). This is NOT a voluntary practice.

  • @TheLegitAlpha
    @TheLegitAlpha 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    Decades later FTX would pull a similar fraud.

  • @andrewkaye2108
    @andrewkaye2108 3 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    I love Cooper..she did not trust ANYONE above her!!
    Thats a good edict to follow in big business. :)

  • @downix
    @downix 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    I knew people who worked for Worldcom. They were completely blindsided.

  • @angrydachshund
    @angrydachshund 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    You just appeared in my feed, first time, but the sound quality is grating. I wish you had a better microphone!

  • @Ryman158
    @Ryman158 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    17:01 Profit Margin is expressed as a percentage, not a dollar amount.

  • @UncleJoeLITE
    @UncleJoeLITE 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Still bingeing trains and companies from Canberra. Cheers.🇦🇺

  • @robertwilloughby8050
    @robertwilloughby8050 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    The Vehicle & General collapse is interesting. This is just a slow, sad, not really anyone's fault, retreat from greatness, from their glory days in the mid 60's to their collapse in 1972. Oh, and it's another insurance company. Yeah, there was a bit of a problem with UK insurance from about 1960 to 1975....😅
    Edit - Someone (thank you for this, it's a great simile!) compared business crashes to the worst railway engines.
    This is the British Rail Class 07 of business failures.

  • @ALCO-C855-fan
    @ALCO-C855-fan 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    Darkness, who would you personally say is worse? ENRON ir Worldcom?

    • @HistoryintheDark
      @HistoryintheDark  6 หลายเดือนก่อน +9

      Worldcom had more money involved, but Enron had been corrupt for longer so... Pick your poison.

    • @ALCO-C855-fan
      @ALCO-C855-fan 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      @@HistoryintheDark I think they're equally terrible. Both in a different thing. If Worldcom is the BALDWIN RP 210, ENRON is the British Rail class 21. That's how bad they are.

    • @dcooper1535
      @dcooper1535 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      Deregulation of utilities really led to a mess there.

    • @ALCO-C855-fan
      @ALCO-C855-fan 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      @@dcooper1535 And the upper hands becoming scammers.

    • @ALCO-C855-fan
      @ALCO-C855-fan 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      @@HistoryintheDark Good word. They're both poison. The Baldwin RP 210 and Beitish Rail class 21 of the stock market.

  • @spicemasterii6775
    @spicemasterii6775 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    I thought KPMG was a radio station

    • @Grnfinger
      @Grnfinger 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      No thats WKRP :)

  • @ClaireRedfieldKennedy-ld2lx
    @ClaireRedfieldKennedy-ld2lx หลายเดือนก่อน

    Ah, "MCI" sure brings back memories... of another annoying phone company like AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon doing non stop ads about how you can save 40% on ALL phone calls which clearly can't be true otherwise everyone would sign up for it and how do you "save 40%" if that's the normal price? I sounds like that "50% off" furniture stores where everything is always 50% off which mean it's really NOT when that's the normal price!

  • @dannypowers4995
    @dannypowers4995 3 หลายเดือนก่อน

    I had a good friend lose tens of thousands of dollars in stck price due to the cooking of the books. 😢

  • @alhasanbeitelmal6218
    @alhasanbeitelmal6218 6 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    Impressive

  • @uncaringgenius
    @uncaringgenius 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    The old Worldcom building is still standing in Jackson today though far as i know no one owns it.

    • @Katchi_
      @Katchi_ 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

      All property is owned. Your state owns it. I don't even live there and know more than you.

    • @RoseanneSeason7
      @RoseanneSeason7 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@Katchi_ what do you want a medal?

  • @Zindo.Majesty.HisMajesty
    @Zindo.Majesty.HisMajesty 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Ahhh long distance phone calls.. I’m old

  • @jacktanguay8061
    @jacktanguay8061 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Bro get that tattooist’s license revoked😭😭😭

  • @ntag411
    @ntag411 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    This was entertaining. Not really proper to be gladdened by others wrong doing, but I can't help it. 😁

  • @johnnybradley4107
    @johnnybradley4107 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    I still have 400 shares of their stock. Anyone want to buy it!LOL

  • @TSquared2001
    @TSquared2001 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    This was good history

  • @Hi-xd5ox
    @Hi-xd5ox 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    This is the future for a company that rhymes with “Besla”

    • @MayorSom
      @MayorSom 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      Buuu….but our Felon overlord is fighting tyrannical gov and bastion of freedom of speech. I mean he did use the NASA tender capital to bailout Tesla Solar 😂😂

    • @Katchi_
      @Katchi_ 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      It is going to be very very messy when it occurs.

    • @JosieJOK
      @JosieJOK 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Not now that EM threw in with Trump and Trump won. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll find out the true extent sometime after 2028…

  • @emfs9522
    @emfs9522 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    The auditors got themselves fired haha.

  • @MobileGamingLegendz
    @MobileGamingLegendz 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Are you Vauce 2 ?

  • @ojkalala
    @ojkalala 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Good information, but IMO, he adds a bit too much opinion.

  • @41moose
    @41moose 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    You and chips…

  • @MrMichaellee5353
    @MrMichaellee5353 8 วันที่ผ่านมา

    It's not chips but crisps😀

  • @robertholtz
    @robertholtz 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    To say that MCI WORLDCOM was not as well known as ENRON is totally preposterous.

    • @tonycrabtree3416
      @tonycrabtree3416 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

      It’s not because of numbness to Enron happening before and being very high profile involving both Enron and Arthur Anderson.

    • @412StepUp
      @412StepUp 3 หลายเดือนก่อน

      It’s not. I’ve heard of Enron for many years but I have just heard about worldcom. I didn’t even know there was a company called worldcom.

  • @dudusblack
    @dudusblack 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    nimeskia Kim Wamae..i.o.nm UUCI Kenya

  • @tishpowers2496
    @tishpowers2496 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Hilarious 😂

  • @believein1
    @believein1 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    They stole money like any black criminal. Billions of it. Yet they get a year in prison. 😂

  • @billybones6463
    @billybones6463 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    "Prepaid status"...what a great nebulous term. I dont undertand the real why though, why did these guys Meyers and Sullivan feel the need to artificially bolster the stock price? Where and why did the pressure come onto them and not others?