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Lea Fastow Begins Jail Term

Lea Fastow, wife of former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, begins her year-long jail sentence today in the downtown Houston federal detention center. As we explained here, this is no club fed. It's an 11-story jail. She'll be in an 8' by 10' cell, which she will share with a roomate. She will live under florescent lights and rarely get outside. There are no facilities for visiting children.

Mrs. Fastow will get no good time off her sentence. There is no federal parole. She'll have to do every day of the year sentence.

We're still angry at her Judge for refusing to recommend a camp. While a Judge's recommendations aren't binding on the Bureau of Prisons, BOP generally tries to follow them. If a Judge's recommendation is not followed, BOP has to write a letter to the Judge and explain the rejection. (The letter is secret, and not provided to defense counsel, only to the Judge and Probation Department.) The Judge in this case played hardball with Mrs. Fastow all the way through, first rejecting the Government's sentencing recommendation, and then refusing to make her requested designation recommendation.

It was Mrs. Fastow who convinced her husband Andrew to cooperate with the Government and take a ten year hit. But for Andrew Fastow cooperating, there would be no Indictment of Ken Lay. She's cooperated with the investigation as well.

The Fastows' guilty pleas were a breakthrough in the 2 1/2-year investigation into the scandal that led to the energy giant's collapse. Both are cooperating in the prosecution of other former Enron executives. ....Lea Fastow wasn't accused of masterminding shady partnerships or financing schemes that led to Enron's collapse. Although she had been assistant treasurer, the schemes largely were hatched after she quit Enron in 1997 to be a full-time mother. ...She pleaded guilty to a charge of signing tax forms she knew didn't include ill-gotten income from her husband's schemes. She also admitted she endorsed and deposited checks of ill-gotten gains disguised as gifts written to their sons.

Lea Fastow clearly didn't need the money:

....Even before her marriage to Andrew Fastow, Lea Weingarten was well-to-do, an heiress to a grocery and real-estate fortune amassed by one of Houston's old-line families.

This is overkill. Lea Fastow shouldn't receive special treatment, but neither should be treated more harshly than anyone else serving the same sentence. As we said in our earlier post, what's next? Will Martha get sent to MCC Manhattan instead of a level one security facility in Connecticut?

Update on Lea Fastow's surrender here.

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