“The Informant”

Price fixing, whistleblowing, prison and redemption.

The Informant is a 2009 movie, directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring Matt Damon as Dr. Mark Whitacre. In the early 1990’s Mark was a Senior Vice President at Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) who was brought into a price fixing scheme dealing with the chemical lysine. He confessed this to his wife Ginger (played by Melanie Lynskey) who threatened to go to the FBI, if he didn’t.

As a whistleblower, Mark wore an FBI wire for 3 years, taping his co-workers each day, then debriefing with FBI agents every night. In his undiagnosed and unmedicated bi-polar condition, Mark tried to maintain his multi-million dollar lifestyle and stole $9,000,000 from ADM.

Even though his bosses were convicted and went to jail for 3 years, Mark fought his embezzlement charge, was convicted and sentenced to 9 years in Federal prison. Before becoming an inmate, Dr. Whitacre experienced a religious conversion which is part of his life today, and an important factor in his position as Executive Director of t-factor initiatives at Coca Cola Consolidated.

Mark and Ginger Whitacre have visited Xavier’s Executive MBA program every year since 2012 to lecture on the importance of ethics, redemption, humilty and the value of having faith in one’s life.

For more information about the movie, click here for Roger Ebert’s review and here for Wikipedia.