Trama

The U.S. government decides to go after an agro-business giant with a price-fixing accusation, based on the evidence submitted by their star witness, vice president-turned-informant Mark Whitacre.

Mark Whitacre has worked for lysine developing company ADM for many years and has even found his way into upper management. But nothing has prepared him for the job he is about to undertake - being a spy for the FBI. Unwillingly pressured into working as an informant against the illegal price-fixing activities of his company, Whitacre gradually adopts the idea that he's a true secret agent. But as his incessant lies keep piling up, his world begins crashing down around him.—The Massie Twins

It's October 1992. Mark Whitacre is a Vice-President at a division of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), a Fortune 500 company based in Decatur, Illinois that produces among other things lysine, a corn based derivative used in almost all manufactured foods. A virus is found in their production plant, which is affecting the production of the lysine. Mark receives a telephone call from a Japanese competitor, who visited the plant recently and who implies that there is a mole in the company that works for that Japanese competitor, he who infected the lysine with the virus among other nefarious activities against ADM. He will divulge the identity of the mole for $10 million. Based on that information, the company brings in the FBI to investigate. On the urging of Mark's wife Ginger, Mark uses the opportunity to tell the FBI that he is aware of price fixing of lysine by ADM and its competitors, as Mark has been sent to meetings where it has been discussed. The FBI convinces Mark to become their eyes and ears to obtain proof of the price fixing agreements, those eyes and ears which includes Mark helping them bug meeting rooms with surveillance equipment. As Mark goes through this process for close to three years, he has a naive view of what his actions mean for himself in relation to his job at ADM. He also has to deal with other goings-on at ADM which may not shine a positive light on himself. These activities in combination may have either caused or be a factor in his his battle with bi-polar disorder.—Huggo

Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a rising star at Decatur, Illinois based Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in the October 1992. ADM provides corn-based products to consumer goods companies which go into everyday staples such as Orange juice. Mark had lived for 3 years in Germany.

Now, ADM is working on a process to take the Dextrose from the corn and turning it into an Amino Acid called Lysine. ADM has the largest Lysine plant in the world. Amino acids like Lysine are the building blocks of protein. Lysine is important for proper growth, and it plays an essential role in the production of Carnitine, a nutrient responsible for converting fatty acids into energy and helping lower cholesterol.

Mark's colleague at office includes Kirk (Eddie Jemison), his boss Mick (Tom Papa), attorney Mark Cheviron (Thomas F. Wilson) and others.

Mark is in charge of the Lysine plant. Now the plant had cost $115 million, but the bugs at the plant are not converting Dextrose into Lysine at the expected efficiency due to a virus inside the system. As such, the plant is losing $7 million every month.

Mark gets a call from a man named Nakawara from a rival Japanese company called Ajinomoto. Nakawara says that Mark's Lysine plant is being sabotaged and demands $10 million to reveal the identity of the saboteur, and a new Lysine bug which is immune to the virus. Mick wants to bring in the FBI and this makes Mark really uncomfortable. He admits to his wife Ginger that there are things at the plant that he doesn't want others to know about.

Mark blows the whistle on the company's price-fixing tactics at the urging of his wife Ginger (Melanie Lynskey).

One night in November 1992, Whitacre confesses to FBI special agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) that ADM executives, including Whitacre himself, had routinely met with their Japanese and Korean competitors to fix the price of Lysine, an additive used in the commercial livestock industry. Mark says that if the FBI investigate his home and office phone records, they will see all these calls to Japan, and when the price fixing is discovered, he would be the fall guy. Mark says that he is working under orders from Mick and his father Dawyne (Tom Smothers).

Cheviron and Mick ask Mark to stop cooperating with the FBI when they realize that the FBI has tapped all of Mark's phone lines at home. Meanwhile, Brian introduces Mark to his supervisor and they recruit him to gather evidence for the FBI against ADM. The FBI knows that ADM has bugged Mark's home phones as well.

At first, Mark collaborates with the FBI and provides evidence. But then he switches tactics and says that there has been a shift at ADM and now they are doing everything by the book. Mark also starts avoiding Brian. ADM offers Mark a $100,000 raise, and he tells Brian that he cannot live 2 lives. Mark says that the price fixing is over. Brian says that he needs proof that the price fixing is over and forces Mark to undergo a lie detector test. Mark fails the test badly. Mark admits that he made up Nakawara as he was way behind production at the plant and he needed an excuse to blame the production problems on an external factor. He also admits that nothing had changed on the price fixing front.

Whitacre secretly gathers hundreds of hours of video and audio over several years to present to the FBI. He assists in gathering evidence by clandestinely taping the company's activity in business meetings at various locations around the globe such as Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, and Hong Kong. Mark even helps the FBI to set up a video camera inside the meeting room of a hotel in Irvine, where executives from ADM were meeting their counterparts from Ajinomoto to discuss production volume levels. The Justice Department looks at the video and informs the FBI that the word "agreement" was not used, and that the video looked more like a discussion. FBI presses Mark for more specific evidence. Eventually the FBI collects enough evidence of collaboration and conspiracy to warrant a raid of ADM.

Whitacre's good deed dovetails with his own major infractions and his internal, secret struggle with bipolar disorder seems to take over his exploits. Whitacre has a meltdown resulting from the pressures of wearing a wire and organizing surveillance for the FBI for three years, instigated by Whitacre's reaction, in increasingly manic overlays, to various trivial magazine articles he reads.

In a stunning turn of events immediately following the covert portion of the case, headlines around the world report that Whitacre had embezzled $9 million from his own company at the same period of time he was secretly working with/ for the FBI and taping his co-workers, while simultaneously aiming to be elected as ADM CEO following the arrest and conviction of the remaining upper management members. In the ensuing chaos, Whitacre appears to shift his trust and randomly destabilize his relationships with Agent Shepard, his partner Agent Herndon (Joel McHale) and numerous attorneys in the process.

Authorities at ADM began investigating, in an attempt to cover tracks, the mounted paper trail with forged names and specs that Whitacre had built to cover his own subversive deeds. After being confronted with evidence of his fraud, Whitacre's reasoning and defensive claims begin to spiral out of control, including an accusation of assault and battery against Agent Shepard and the FBI, which had made a substantial move to distance their case from Whitacre entirely. Because of this major infraction and Whitacre's bizarre behavior, he was sentenced to a prison term three times as long as that meted out to the white-collar criminals he helped to catch.

In the epilogue of Whitacre's case, Agent Herndon visits inmate Whitacre in prison as he videotapes a futile appeal to seek a presidential pardon. Overweight, balding and psychologically beaten after his years long ordeal, Mark Whitacre is eventually released from prison with his wife Ginger, waiting to greet him.