Wife of former Enron leader sentenced to year in prison

HOUSTON (AP) -- Lea Fastow, the wife of former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow, is trading in her life of luxury for an 8-foot-by-10-foot prison cell.
Fastow was set to report today to the federal lockup in downtown Houston to serve a yearlong sentence for a misdemeanor tax crime.
The 42-year-old real estate and grocery heiress pleaded guilty in May, admitting to helping her husband hide money from financial schemes that fueled the one-time energy giant's December 2001 failure.
She faced a 2 p.m. CDT deadline for surrendering at the 11-story federal detention center.
Fastow's legal team had asked that the judge in her case recommend the Federal Bureau of Prisons place her in a minimum-security camp for women in Bryan, about 90 miles northwest of Houston.
But U.S. District Judge David Hittner refused to recommend a specific institution, and the prisons bureau assigned her to the Houston lockup.
Hittner granted her permission to travel to Florida with her family from June 19 through Sunday.
The lockup is more restrictive than minimum-security camps because it houses inmates -- both men and women -- of all kinds of security classifications. Most are there for drug crimes.
Fastow's lawyer, Mike DeGeurin, didn't return repeated calls to comment.