Peter Chrisanthopoulos, former president of broadcasting and programming at O&M, is reported to have pleaded guilty last week to falsifying time sheets and instructing other, unnamed, Ogilvy employees to do the same.
Two other former Ogilvy executives have also been charged but have vehemently protest their innocence. They are Thomas Early, who resigned from his role chief financial officer of Ogilvy & Mather New York the day after he was charged, and Shona Seifert, who was an executive group director at O&M at the time but is now president of TBWA\Chiat\Day in New York.
Chrisanthopoulos worked at Ogilvy & Mather and later at sister WPP Group agency MindShare, but left in 2000 to join the television company Pappas Telecasting as chief operating officer for marketing and sales. He was promoted to president and chief operating officer last year but resigned from the job on January 12.
The charges stem from Ogilvy & Mather's work on the US government's anti-drugs campaign to which it was appointed five years ago.
Individuals stand accused of ordering employees to revise timesheets inflating the number of hours that had been spent on the campaign, as well as telling staff to record a specific percentage of their time on the account whether or not they were working on it.
Ogilvy has paid $1.8m to the government to settle charges and does not itself face legal action.
In a statement, the agency said: "A plea by a former employee who left the company in 2000 was expected. Like the indictments against two former employees last month, it is related to billing mistakes for which Ogilvy compensated the government in a settlement announced two years ago."
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