Former WorldCom exec pleads guilty to fraud

NEW YORK: WorldCom Inc.'s former director of management reporting, Betty Vinson, pleaded guilty to securities fraud, marking the third company executive to agree to help prosecutors in their probe of massive accounting fraud at the telephone giant.

Vinson entered her plea of guilty to one count of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud in Manhattan federal court. In August, prosecutors said they planned to charge her and Troy Norman, WorldCom's former director of legal entity accounting, in an information, a type of document that often means a defendant plans to plead guilty.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck said Vinson had agreed to cooperate with the government's investigation. He also said that Vinson said she had been ordered to falsify WorldCom accounting records by a supervisor. Peck said Norman also would plead guilty later and also had agreed to cooperate.

© Reuters