The Scandal That Keeps On Giving

Six years after Enron's fall from grace, another Enron executive is in the news, but this time it's not a bold-faced name and has nothing to do with off-the-books entities or Nigerian barges.

Christian Deeb Rahaim, 38, the former director of human resources for Enron was sentenced last week to five years and three months in prison for charging the company $3 million in fake consultation services -- a sum that a U.S. District Court judge is now insisting he pay back.

Rahaim was convicted last December of having continuously charged his employer for consultation services never provided. He used that money, collected over about six months in the spring of 2005, to pay off credit card debt, open personal investment accounts, and to buy a half million dollar home in Houston.

The government seized Rahaim's home and $2.3 million in a separate proceeding and will be using that to pay back the $3 million he stole.

The Mandeville, Louisiana, native perhaps got away with duping his company, now called Enron Creditors Recovery Corp., while they were busy picking up the pieces of the company's 2001 collapse into bankruptcy amid its infamous accounting scandal.

So the next time you feel the urge to complain about how bothersome Sarbanes-Oxley is, just think about how much trouble you can get into if you wait until someone like Rahaim to test your internal controls for you.

by Andrea Chalupa