(MONEY Magazine) – In August a $500 contest, sponsored by Philadelphia-area communications firm Gregory FCA, to write the best mock earnings release of an infamous public company in the style of a well-known author, came to a close. The 35 entries ranged in tone from the highbrow (in the style of Cervantes) to the traditional ("Twas the Night Before Christmas") to the mildly obscene (Danielle Steel). The winner was a Catcher in the Rye parody in the first-person voice of former WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers. (Sample line: "And the SEC: They're all a bunch of phonies.")

The prize-winning scribe, 56-year-old Judy Tanis Parr of Westerville, Ohio, said she was inspired by what she sees as a resemblance between Ebbers and Salinger's angst-ridden adolescent protagonist, Holden Caulfield. "They're both people who don't claim responsibility for things that happen to them," she says. --CYBELE WEISSER