White-collar criminal to speak April 16 about business ethics
BERKELEY – Serving prison time shouldn't be necessary to learn business ethics, but for Walt Pavlo, a former MCI employee who has just been released from a South Carolina prison, serving time gave him the opportunity to reflect on the actions that led to his incarceration.
Pavlo will speak at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business as part of the Dean's Lecture Series at 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 16, in the Haas School's Arthur Andersen Auditorium.
Because of the recent ethics scandals that have rocked corporate America, the Haas School last year launched a major expansion of activities in the area of corporate social responsibility and business ethics, according to Dean Tom Campbell.
Pavlo, who spoke before the FBI at its National Convention on Corporate Fraud, was a young executive at MCI in the telecommunications division, handling the billing and collections in MCI's reseller division. That area of the company was having trouble collecting fees from reseller telephone companies, and Pavlo began manipulating financial records to hide bad debt in 1996 and ended up embezzling money from MCI.
He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering in January 2001.
Before joining MCI, he worked for Goodyear Tire in its aerospace division as a financial analyst and for GEC Ltd. of England as a contract manager. He holds both an engineering degree and an MBA.