First there was the luxury boat business. Ebbers liked his yacht so much, he bought the company. He paid $14.4 million in 1999 for yacht-building company Intermarine Savannah and then reportedly invested a further $25 million in the business. As Power and Motoryacht Magazine puts it in a review of Intermarine's flagship yacht, the Intermarine 145, "nothing worthwhile can ever be achieved without taking a risk." Hmmm, yes, that fits Bernie's style.

Ebbers handed the company, which was leaking more than $100,000 a week, over to WorldCom in late 2002. The carrier offloaded it to another yacht builder, Palmer Johnson Savannah, for $9.8 million in February 2003. After costs, MCI netted about $7 million.

Next was the Ebbers weekend retreat in Canada, Douglas Lake Ranch, a modest patch of real estate -- 500,000 acres, or about three times the size of New York City. (Handy for the kids, plenty of room for them to run around.) Ebbers bought that for $73 million, and MCI sold it in May 2003 for "gross proceeds" of $68.5 million.

So what about the remaining lucre? How will that be recovered? There are a few other Ebbers investments:

How about 540,000 acres of timber forest in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee? Ebbers owned 65 percent of Joshua Holdings, which bought the timber land for $600 million in 1999. No word on whether this has been sold or not, as MCI didn't return calls.

A saw mill, Columbus Lumber, in Brookhaven, Mississippi. Value and status unknown.

Looking for organic growth? Look no further than Pine Ridge Farm, which specializes in herbs, flowers, and workhorses (insert your own joke here...).

If you fancy owning a sports team, you already missed your chance to buy one from Bernie. He sold his stake in the Jackson Bandits hockey team in 2002.

— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading