Wife of Ex-Enron Chief Reports to Prison

[Khephra]

HOUSTON -- Lea Fastow, the wife of former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow, reported to a strict federal prison on Monday, not the prison camp for women she had hoped for, to begin serving a yearlong sentence for a misdemeanor tax crime.

The 42-year-old real estate and grocery heiress pleaded guilty in May, admitting that she helped her husband hide money from financial schemes that fueled the one-time energy giant's December 2001 failure.

Fastow's legal team had asked that the judge to recommend the Federal Bureau of Prisons place her in a minimum-security camp for women in Bryan, about 90 miles northwest of Houston. But U.S. District Judge David Hittner refused to recommend a specific institution, and the prisons bureau last month assigned her to the Houston prison, four miles from her home in an affluent neighborhood here and a mile from Enron's former headquarters.

Fastow reported several hours early. "She knows she was due here at 2 o'clock and she wanted to get it going," said her lawyer, Mike DeGeurin. "If the judge says do 12 pushups, she's going to do 13."

http://www.newsday.com/business/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-enron-lea-fastow,0,7707334.story?coll=sns-ap-business-headlines

[Sub Atomic]

1. Aww, the poor dear.

And putting her up within her own neighborhood, too.

That judge sure was a meany!

[Ruffhowse]

2. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!

[Warpy]

3. Hurt millions of people, destroy their hope for a secure future

and you end up in Club Fed, just a few miles from your family, with a light sentence.

Hurt one yuppie in a nonviolent but threatening mugging, and you'll get years in prison far enough away from your family that they'll forget you ever existed.

Something is terribly wron with our justice system.

[Bridget Burke]

4. She's not in Club Fed

From the article: She had hoped to serve her time at a the prison camp for women in Bryan, where the couple's two young sons could have enjoyed playground equipment during visits. She could have worn shorts and T-shirts, played softball, and perhaps tended to one of the complex's vegetable and flower gardens.

Instead, she will share an 8-foot-by-10-foot cell in a gray, 11-story building where the only chance to go outside is during brief and rare outings on the roof. She'll probably prepare food or wash bed sheets for less than 50 cents a day.

Indeed, she's closer to her family. But her surroundings will not be plush at all.

[olddem43]

5. she should stay in until everyone gets all their money back.

[DemBones DemBones]

6. She got the maximum sentence, at "a strict federal prison"

so I don't think it's an issue if it's only 4 miles from her house. (Though I am somewhat surprised a prison is that close to Houston's rich folks.)


The prison is more restrictive than minimum-security camps because it houses inmates -- both men and women -- of all kinds of security classifications. Most are there for drug crimes.

<snip>

She had hoped to serve her time at a the prison camp for women in Bryan, where the couple's two young sons could have enjoyed playground equipment during visits. She could have worn shorts and T-shirts, played softball, and perhaps tended to one of the complex's vegetable and flower gardens.

Instead, she will share an 8-foot-by-10-foot cell in a gray, 11-story building where the only chance to go outside is during brief and rare outings on the roof. She'll probably prepare food or wash bed sheets for less than 50 cents a day.


I don't think she'll be having much fun, nor should she be.

[0007]

7. I think she got off way to easy

[SoCalDem]

8. I would do a year in prison, if I knew I had millions stashed away

They probably have tons of money safely protected offshore..and when their "sentences" are up, they iwll have paid their debt to society, and can then retire in leisure to some sun-drenched island paradise..

The people who lost it all in the scam, will be "sentenced" to stay here in a dingy apartment with no healthcare and no savings or retirement..

I would not call the Fastows losers..