A new movie features Matt Damon playing the story of Mark Whitacre, an employee of ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) who was a whisteblower on their price fixing while embezzling $9 million. Whitacre eventually went to prison.
Many may not know that through his whole experience, Whitacre was converted. Marv Olasky recently interviewed him:
In 1983, at age 25, Mark Whitacre earned a Ph.D. in Nutritional Biochemistry from Cornell University. At age 32 he became president of the fastest-growing division within Archer Daniels Midland, one of the largest conglomerates in America. At age 40 he entered prison and became a Christian there. At age 49, in December 2006, he left prison.
Whitacre is best known publicly for his whistleblower role in the 1990s ADM price-fixing case, which ended with a $100 million fine for the company and prison for some top officials. ADM’s 2005 annual report also lists a $400 million payment to settle a class action suit. But Whitacre, while secretly taping price-fixing discussions, was also stealing $9 million from ADM.
His saga of corruption and mania will receive new attention over the next several weeks as The Informant!, a movie starring Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre, hits theaters around the country. (See "Unfaithful telling," Sept. 18, 2009.) The film is a dark comedy that does not deal with Whitacre’s conversion to Christ—and that’s a remarkable story of how hard time created receptivity to God’s good news. Whitacre told me that had he avoided prison or received only the six-month sentence that could have been his at one point, he would have remained merely a nominal churchgoer who worshipped financial success. . .
Read the whole thing here.
HT: JT
