Enron wife sent to tough jail

CONVICTED tax cheat Lea Fastow, the wife of former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow, today swaps her £400,000 luxury home for a shared prison cell in Houston Texas.

Fastow is to serve a year for signing a fraudulent tax return to help her husband hide illegal schemes that fuelled the energy company's crash.

Her defence team had sought leniency for Fastow on the grounds that co-operation by her and her husband has helped cast the net further up the chain at Enron.

Andrew Fastow's testimony is believed to have led to the indictment last week of former Enron chief Kenneth Lay on fraud and theft charges. The defence had asked for her to be allowed to serve her sentence at a low-security rural prison camp where the atmosphere is more relaxed and inmates play sports in the open air.

But, despite the prosecution having no objections, the judge ordered her to report to the bleak federal detention centre, a grey, 11-storey building with a small rooftop exercise yard. Prisoners are housed two to a cell with a shared toilet.

'She'll spend the vast majority of her time indoors under fluorescent lights,' said David Novak, a former Microsoft consultant who served a year in a federal prison for mail fraud. He now runs a consulting-service helping other federal prisoners prepare for life on the inside.

It is a bitter fall for Fastow, who was born Lea Weingarten into a well-to-do Houston family and is heiress to a large grocery and real estate fortune. 'The quicker she just kind of keeps her head down and does her time and does what she can to help those around her, the better off she'll be,' Novak said.

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