Bernie Ebbers spent his last night of freedom doing what he loved best - making deals, in this case with titan George Soros, who bought one the biggest working farms in the U.S. from the disgraced corporate titan.
Ebbers, 65 and ailing from heart disease and other complications, reports to prison today, where he's slated to serve a 25-year sentence for engineering the largest fraud to hit corporate America, the $11 billion collapse of WorldCom.
Colleagues said Ebbers disappeared from the public eye in recent days, choosing to remain in solitude yesterday with his wife Christie behind the draped windows at their relatively modest, three-bedroom home in suburban Jackson, Miss.
"It's an evening of reflection for them," said Bill Brandt, a restructuring expert helping Ebbers sell off his assets ahead of prison.
At one point shortly before dusk, Ebbers, chomping a cigar and dressed in jeans and a blue golf shirt, opened his front door to chase an Associated Press reporter from his porch.
It's likely that Ebbers could serve his time at a federal prison nearby in Yazoo, Miss. - a minimum security facility with little or no fencing, where low-risk inmates sleep in bunk beds in cubicle rooms.
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