Kim Emigh didn't particularly want to be the one to say no. His strict adherence to ethics had already brought him trouble at Worldcom. He'd had to change jobs within the giant telecommunications company to avoid bosses who didn't appreciate his meticulous attention to their deals.

For years, he'd seen the limos provided by vendors arrive at the Worldcom's Richardson offices to whisk a manager nicknamed Mr. Free Lunch away to dine at The Mansion or other exclusive restaurants, week after week. He'd witnessed first-hand the anger of executives when he questioned statements from their favorite subcontractors who were asking payment for, say, 10 workers who somehow had only five Social Security numbers among them. He'd had other managers ask him for advice on how to carry out corporate directives that he thought were unscrupulous.

But up until that day in December 2000, nobody had asked him to do anything that he believed would break the law. This time, he believed, what the company wanted him to do could be construed as tax fraud. He sent word of his concerns up the corporate chain, and the reply came back down: Do it anyway. Emigh, a budget and financial analyst with eight years experience in the telecom industry, and an excellent record at Worldcom, knew he couldn't. And he feared he knew what would happen as a result.

Emigh (pronounced Amy) called a woman he knew near the top of the Worldcom pyramid, an assistant to Worldcom's chief operating officer. Of course the directed actions were not Worldcom policy, she said -- and indeed, the company did not put the changes into effect while Emigh worked there. She thanked him profusely for bringing the matter to her chief's attention.

"I said, 'Sue, I'll get fired over this.' She said, 'Oh, nobody would do that.' "

No? Two months after Kim Emigh blew the whistle -- internally -- on the accounting impropriety, MCI Worldcom laid him off -- the only full-time worker he knows of to be let go during that round of "reductions."

When he came home that day and told his wife, Janet, the bad news, they both still held onto hope that MCI top brass would reverse the decision. Janet had a temporary secret from Kim -- she was pregnant with their third child, but she wanted to tell him that news on a happier day. As it turned out, she couldn't wait that long. Kim Emigh didn't work again for 14 months -- months during which he saw one job possibility after another disappear because, he believes, of what employers were told or not told when they called Worldcom for a reference. The couple nearly lost their house. They cashed in their children's college funds to stay afloat, sold investments at rock-bottom prices, and scraped by with the help of family and friends. Emigh was weeks away from being vested in the Worldcom retirement program when the company let him go. NEXT »

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5