The scene said everything about the year in white-collar crime: Bernard Ebbers, the jocular, folksy former boss of WorldCom Inc., hunched forward in a courtroom chair, quietly crying.
He had just been sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating the record $11 billion accounting fraud at the toppled telecom - essentially a life term for a man 63 years old and with a history of heart trouble.
It was a startling punishment, but far from extraordinary in 2005: In the cavalcade of recent corporate scandals, this was the year the hammer finally fell on top executives. Hard.
And the trend toward harsher sentencings for corporate crooks comes just as the curtain goes up on what's expected to be the most complex of the white-collar cases to date, the fraud trial of Enron founder Kenneth Lay and two other former officials.
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