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Enron
Enron Corporation (NYSE: ENE) was an electricity wholesaler implicated in manufacturing the California Energy Crisis of 2000 and 2001. Because Enron executives employed complex schemes of accounting fraud to conceal the company's financial condition, the name Enron has become synonymous with with corporate fraud and corruption.
Enron filed for bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of New York in late 2001.
Audiotpes released in a court case in Washington state graphically show how Enron traders willfully manipulated the wholesale market to extort profits. 1
In November of 2004, a jury in a federal case convicted five officials of Enron and Merril Lynch in a chase of corporate fraud that exposed a scheme in which the two companies conspired to prop up Enron's earnings estimates by agreeing to secretely disguise a $7 million loan from the bank to the failing company as a purchase of equity in three energy-producing barges in Nigera. Guilty verdicts were issued for former Enron finance executive Daniel O. Boyle, and former Merril Lynch officers Daniel Bayly, James A. Brown, and Robert S. Furst. 2
References
2. Enron Fraud Trial Ends in 5 Convictions, WashingtonPost.com, 11/2/2004 [cached]