Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Ex-Enron official's wife leaves prison

Lea Fastow will spend the last month of her one-year sentence in a halfway house in Houston.

HOUSTON - The real estate and grocery heir married to former Enron Corp. finance chief Andrew Fastow is beginning her life outside of prison.

Lea Fastow left an 11-story federal lockup in downtown Houston before sunrise Monday to move into a halfway house where she will serve the last few weeks of her yearlong prison term for failing to declare her husband's illegal kickbacks as income.

"It's supposed to be a tough year," she said as she left the prison flanked by her husband, sister and lawyers. "I'm going home to my family soon, and that's exactly what I'm looking forward to."

She arrived minutes later at the Leidel Comprehensive Sanction Center a few blocks from the federal detention center, said her attorney, Mike DeGeurin. Lea Fastow entered prison July 12, 2004, and is scheduled to be released July 10.

"There is no special treatment," DeGeurin said. "She is not getting any early release, and she is being treated like everyone else."

The Leidel center is a low-rise institutional structure where Fastow will have a few more freedoms than prison, but her life is not her own.

She'll be required to find a job and earn whatever the employer normally pays, but she'll leave behind menial onsite jobs like kitchen or laundry duty that pay less than 50 cents a day.

Everything, from what they wear to where they work to who they can visit, must be approved by the prisons bureau.

Halfway house residents can wear some of their own clothes rather than just the standard prison-issue uniforms and canvas shoes. They can also earn weekend passes away from the facility.

Inmates still have curfews, and Bond said case managers check up on them when they're at work or away from the halfway house. Inmates can't have cell phones, but they can drive their own cars to work or for authorized off-site visits.

"She can't just go out and have lunch with her friends," Bond said.

Terry Garcia, director of the Leidel facility, said it houses 150 men and women, and each has an individual plan for reintegration into the community and with their families. Lea Fastow pleaded guilty last year to a misdemeanor tax crime for failing to report on joint tax returns the gains from kickbacks she and her husband, Andrew, pocketed from his illegal dealings at Enron. Andrew Fastow is to be sentenced in June 2006. He also is expected to be a key witness in the January conspiracy and fraud trial of Enron founder Kenneth Lay, former CEO Jeffrey Skilling and former top accountant Richard Causey.

[Last modified June 7, 2005, 02:15:48]