The wife of former Enron Corp. finance chief Andrew Fastow has been ordered to report to a federal prison next month to serve her yearlong sentence for helping her husband hide ill-gotten income.
Lea Fastow’s lawyers had asked the judge in her case to recommend she be placed at a federal minimum security prison camp for women. But U.S. District Judge David Hittner rejected that request and refused to recommend a specific institution to Federal Bureau of Prisons. The bureau ultimately chooses where inmates serve time, but generally tries to accommodate a judge’s recommendation if the institution’s security level matches the crime.
Late Monday, Hittner ordered that Lea Fastow surrender July 12 to a federal detention center in Houston.
Her lawyer, Mike DeGeurin, didn’t immediately respond to a call for comment Tuesday.
Lea Fastow, 42, pleaded guilty May 6 to a misdemeanor tax crime and Hittner sentenced her to the maximum of one year in prison.
The sentencing capped months of legal wrangling in which the Fastows’ lawyers sought to minimize her time away from their two young children.
Her husband was initially indicted on what eventually grew to 98 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading, money laundering and others for engineering widespread schemes to hide debt, inflate profits and enrich himself on the side.
He pleaded guilty in January and agreed to serve the maximum 10-year sentence for the conspiracy counts and help prosecutors pursue other cases.