The darkest days of National's management history occurred in 2000, when an internal auditor, tipped off by an informer, discovered that longtime executive James Squires was receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks from scrap suppliers. This was an especially painful event for the company because Squires had been hailed as a "self-made man" who had advanced from a mill laborer to a Senior Vice President over the course of his 42-year career, and had professed to be the pinnacle of financial stewardship. Nevertheless, in August 2001, Squires was convicted in Federal Court of receiving kickbacks, and in 2002 was sentenced to two years imprisonment. Later he was forced to pay National approximately $3,000,000 in a civil lawsuit. In his allocution at sentencing, Squires noted, apologetically, that he had taken the improper payments because the company was promoting "Harvard MBA's" more rapidly than it was promoting him. The truth of the matter, however, was that Squires was one of the company's most senior executives, and that National Steel did not have any Harvard MBA's within its ranks, let alone any who were promoted ahead of Squires.
