HOUSTON — The real estate and grocery heiress 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 re- leased July 10.
"There is no special treatment," DeGeurin said. "She is not getting any early release, and she is being treated like everyone else."
Tracy Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said it's common for federal inmates to finish their sentences in halfway houses, particularly nonviolent first-time offenders.
The bureau contracts with about 250 halfway houses across the country.
The Leidel center is a low-rise institutional structure where Fastow will have a few more freedoms than prison, but her life is not yet her own.
She'll be required to find a job and earn whatever the employer normally pays, but she'll leave behind menial on-site 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 bu-reau.
"People think it's really nice in a halfway house, but they have so many rules, it can be more restrictive than prison," said Karen Bond, a Columbus, Ohio, advocate for federal prisoners who finished serving the last six months of a three-year sentence for interstate securities fraud at a halfway house in 2002.
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. She declined to discuss Lea Fastow specifically, citing center and bureau policy.
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. She had initially pleaded guilty to one of six felonies stemming from the same crimes, which included endorsing and depositing checks made out to the couple's two young sons.
An heiress to the Weingarten real estate and grocery fortune, Lea Fastow rose to assistant treasurer at Enron before she quit in 1997 to stay home with her children. Unlike her husband, she was never accused of any crimes at the company.
She was indicted in April 2003, six months after her husband was indicted on what grew to 98 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading, money laundering and others.
According to DeGeurin, she coaxed her husband into pleading guilty in January 2004 to two counts of conspiracy. He admitted to orchestrating schemes to hide Enron debt and inflate profits while pocketing millions of dollars. He agreed to serve the maximum 10-year sentence. Andrew Fastow is to be sentenced in June 2006.