The article focuses on Bernie Ebbers who was charged with fraud in the WorldCom scandal. On March 15th it was that sense of disbelief which, after eight days of deliberation, led the jury to find the former boss of WorldCom guilty of fraud, conspiracy and filing false documents with regulators in relation to the $11 billion accounting fraud that brought the telecoms giant crashing down in America's biggest-ever bankruptcy. The conviction of Mr Ebbers is by far the most significant yet in America's latest crusade against corporate crime. An initial bout of post-Enron public fury had died down, and attempts to reform corporate governance and accounting--notably the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation then before Congress--were losing momentum. WorldCom changed all that, by convincing the American public that Enron was not a solitary event, and convincing congressmen and the Bush administration that, with mid-term elections looming, they would pay a political price if they did nothing. Mr Ebbers had argued that, although a massive fraud took place, it was masterminded by Scott Sullivan, WorldCom's chief financial officer, and that he was unaware of it. A former milkman with no formal training in accounting, Mr Ebbers claimed that he was incapable of spotting the fraud. Views such as Mr Wright's--and the judge's clarification that concluding that Mr Ebbers knowingly turned a blind eye to Mr Sullivan's creative accounting was enough to find him guilty--carried the day.