Guilty, guilty, guilty!

The Fastows have made their pleas.

Andrew Fastow, the ex-Enron chief financial officer, pleaded guilty at 2:30 p.m. today to two counts of conspiracy and agreed to accept a 10-year prison sentence and forfeit $23.8 million to the federal government.

Fastow's wife, Lea, pleaded guilty at 4:15 p.m. to filing a false tax return.

Andrew Fastow will also cooperate with prosecutors in their investigation of wrongdoing at the fallen energy giant.

The property listed in Andrew Fastow's forfeiture agreement includes houses in Galveston and in Norwich, Vt.

Lea Fastow's deal calls for a five-month prison sentence and a year of supervised release, including five months of house arrest. U.S. District Judge David Hittner will decide later whether he accepts the sentencing deal.

The sweetest sentence you'll read in a newspaper this week:

Those close to the case expect [Jeff] Skilling will be charged soon and that [Ken] Lay will be under great scrutiny.

I can't wait. Neither can a friend of mine who used to work at Enron and who is still looking for another job. She sent me the following email, reprinted with her permission:

1) They'd better be giving up some pretty damning evidence against Skilling. Specifically, it had better be sufficient to put him away -- I care slightly less about getting Lay. My complaint against Lay is more along the lines of if he didn't know about the financial funny business, he certainly had an obligation to all Enron stakeholders to know and by not knowing he failed miserably in his duty.

And,

2) Gee, if the Fastows give up enough, I'd be willing to let relatives take custody of the kids, instead of putting them into the foster system while both parents are in jail. Screw letting her serve time first and be out before he starts his sentence. After all, didn't Andy and Lea hide some of the money in accounts in the kids' names? I would construe that as child endangerment or somesuch -- in other words, as far as I'm concerned, they aren't fit parents.

I know, I know, it really isn't fair to punish the children for the sins of the parents and all that, but so many people lost their jobs, their savings, their sense of security and more; returning $23+ million dollars will not wipe them out (if it does they were incredibly poor managers of their personal finances).

No, I'm not bitter or anything.

The bit about the Fastow kids is on page 9 of the complaint, which is page 11 of the PDF file linked above.

Congratulations to Leslie Caldwell and her team of prosecutors. I'll be cheering you on as you set your sights on bigger fish.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on January 14, 2004 to Enronarama | TrackBack