Choose a time period below to explore the scandal.

1980s

July 1985
Houston Natural Gas merges with InterNorth, a natural gas company based in Omaha, Nebraska, to form the modern-day Enron, an interstate and intrastate natural gas pipeline company with 37,500 miles of pipe.

January 1987
Enron discovers that oil traders in their Valhalla, New York office have been diverting company funds to their personal accounts.

April 1987
The board—including founder and CEO Kenneth Lay—learns that Louis Borget and Tom Mastroeni, the men in charge of the Valhalla operation, were gambling beyond their limits, destroying trading reports, keeping two sets of books and manipulating accounting in order to give the appearance that Valhalla was earning steady profits. The board does not fire the Valhalla executives because Lay makes it clear that they are making too much money to let them go. Lay increases the trading limits of the Valhalla traders.

October 1987
Borget and Mastroeni end up on the wrong side of a massive trade, threatening to bankrupt the company. Enron executive Mike Muckleroy manages to bluff the market and reduce the loss from one billion dollars to 140 million dollars, thus saving the company.

October 1987
Ken Lay professes shock at the actions of the traders. They are fired. Three years later, Borget and Mastroeni plead guilty to a number of felonies. Borget spends one year in jail; Mastroeni receives a suspended sentence.

October 19, 1987
Black Monday. The Dow Jones industrial plummets 508 points, dropping 20.4 percent. It’s the greatest single-day loss in Wall Street history.

1989
Enron begins trading natural gas commodities. The company will become the largest natural gas merchant in North America and the United Kingdom.

Read about Enron in the 1990s >>