Oklahoma's attorney general has announced the state will press criminal charges against MCI, formerly Worldcom, and several exec's including heretofore untouchable CEO Bernie Ebbers. Jim Cramer has been railing about the SEC and Justice Department going easy on MCI for months, and apparently someone was listening. The SEC meanwhile issued a terse statement to the effect it hoped this prosecution didn't adversely affect other ongoing cases. Fat chance. They are doing bumpus and everyone knows it. I saw on CNBC this morning they had a segment on it and some dickhead NY lawyer was spouting off about how difficult it made everything ,etc. Maybe if the feds were doing their friggin' jobs instead of giving MCI and its ecexs the kid glove treatment, Oklahoma wouldn't have felt the need to act. I give them credit for standing up and saying enough. Bottom line is MCI was a huge fraud, probably from its beginning. It has had ongoing disputes with AT&T and local Bell operating companies for decades. The FCC has paved the way for this company its entire history and forced the Bells to subsidize it. Now it turns out the Bells were right all along. MCI seemingly was run by a bunch of crooks who cheated not only their investors but also other phone companies that were forced to interconnect with it and provide it local connections at bargain rates. Way to go FCC. Not only did you screw up the broadcasting and data industries, you screwed over the local phone companies too. As Cramer has noted, the biggest outrages are the fact the federal government continued to award them huge contracts, and will no doubt do so again after a brief suspension, plus the fact that honest companies will now have to compete against an MCI that shed its debt through chapter 11. I feel sorry for the low level employees of this rogue enterprise. Most of them had nothing to do with the fraud and they will suffer if it is put out of business. Guess what, a lot fo Enron employees suffered too. They can hire all the Richard Breedens and other former SEC commissioners they want at enormous salaries. It won't change the fact that this company was vastly more corrupt than Enron, Arthur Andersen or any other company its size I'm aware of. As for Bernie Ebbers, I'm not impressed that the feds have "thoroughly investigated" this mess and have not seen fit to indict him. He was in charge, he took billions in compensation and perks, now let him answer for what happened on his watch.