The whistle-blower | Sherron Watkins

The former Enron finance executive discovered the fragile so-called Raptors, a series of entities created to hedge inflated asset values and keep hundreds of millions of dollars in debt off Enron's books. Backed by Enron stock, the Raptors were wrongly treated as independent of Enron and helped fuel the company's collapse when share prices fell throughout 2001. Watkins met with Kenneth Lay after Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling resigned in August 2001 to warn the company founder that the structures could doom the company. Several fraud charges against Skilling are related to the Raptors.

The Associated Press