Lea Fastow

Last updated
Lea Fastow
Born
Lea Weingarten Fastow

Education Tufts University
Northwestern University (MBA)
Spouse Andrew Fastow
ChildrenJeffrey Fastow, Matthew Fastow [1] [2]
Parent(s)Jack Weingarten (businessman), Miriam Hadar (Miss Israel, journalist lawyer)

Lea Weingarten Fastow is a former Enron assistant treasurer who pleaded guilty to tax evasion and filing fraudulent Income Tax returns. The wife of former Enron executive and convicted felon Andrew Fastow, she was the second former Enron executive to go to prison after Enron collapsed due to fraud in December 2001. [3]

Fastow is a native of Houston, Texas, where she was born into a Jewish family. Her mother was Miriam Hadar Weingarten, winner of the Miss Israel competition in 1958, and her father was Jack Weingarten, of the Weingarten's supermarket chain, who was a real-estate broker. When she was young her parents divorced and her mother went on to marry to Akiva Nof, and from this marriage was born a half-sister. She graduated from Tufts University, where she met her future husband, and earned an MBA at Northwestern University. She and her husband both attended Congregation Or Ami, a conservative synagogue. [4]

In 2003, Fastow was indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to commit wire fraud; money laundering conspiracy and four counts of filing false income tax returns. [5] She pleaded guilty on January 14, 2004, to submitting a fraudulent income tax return that did not include profits her family had received from her husband's off-the-books partnerships. [6]

Fastow reported to prison on July 12, 2004, and was released to a halfway house on July 11, 2005. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enron</span> American energy company

Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 20,600 staff and was a major electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper company, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion during 2000. Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years.

Andrew Stuart "Andy" Fastow is an American convicted felon and former financier who was the chief financial officer of Enron Corporation, an energy trading company based in Houston, Texas, until he was fired shortly before the company declared bankruptcy. Fastow was one of the key figures behind the complex web of off-balance-sheet special purpose entities used to conceal Enron's massive losses in their quarterly balance sheets. By unlawfully maintaining personal stakes in these ostensibly independent ghost-entities, he was able to defraud Enron out of tens of millions of dollars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MCI Inc.</span> American telecommunications company (1983–2006)

MCI, Inc. was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second-largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. WorldCom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunications companies, including MCI Communications in 1998, and filed bankruptcy in 2002 after an accounting scandal, in which several executives, including CEO Bernard Ebbers, were convicted of a scheme to inflate the company's assets. In January 2006, the company, by then renamed MCI, was acquired by Verizon Communications and was later integrated into Verizon Business.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Ballance</span> American politician and attorney (1942–2019)

Frank Winston Ballance Jr. was an American politician and attorney who was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from 2003 to 2004, representing North Carolina's 1st congressional district.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Skilling</span> Former CEO of Enron Corporation

Jeffrey Keith Skilling is an American businessman and convicted felon who was the CEO of Enron Corporation during the Enron scandal. In 2006, he was convicted of federal felony charges relating to Enron's collapse and eventually sentenced to 24 years in prison. The US Supreme Court heard arguments in the appeal of the case March 1, 2010. On June 24, 2010, the Supreme Court vacated part of Skilling's conviction and transferred the case back to the lower court for resentencing.

The Death Star strategy was the name Enron gave to their practice of shuffling energy around the California power grid to receive payments from the state for "relieving congestion". According to the company's own memo they would be paid "for moving energy to relieve congestion, without actually moving any energy or relieving any congestion."

The trial of Kenneth Lay, former chairman and CEO of Enron, and Jeffrey Skilling, former CEO and COO, was presided over by federal district court Judge Sim Lake in 2006 in response to the Enron scandal.

The NatWest Three, also known as the Enron Three, are the British businessmen Giles Darby, David Bermingham and Gary Mulgrew. In 2002, they were indicted in Houston, Texas, on seven counts of wire fraud against their former employer, Greenwich NatWest, as part of the Enron scandal.

A tax protester, in the United States, is a person who denies that he or she owes a tax based on the belief that the Constitution of the United States, statutes, or regulations do not empower the government to impose, assess or collect the tax. The tax protester may have no dispute with how the government spends its revenue. This differentiates a tax protester from a tax resister, who seeks to avoid paying a tax because the tax is being used for purposes with which the resister takes issue.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth Lay</span> Founder of Enron Corporation (1942–2006)

Kenneth Lee Lay was an American businessman who was the founder, chief executive officer and chairman of Enron. He was heavily involved in the eponymous accounting scandal that unraveled in 2001 into the largest bankruptcy ever to that date. Lay was indicted by a grand jury and was found guilty of 10 counts of securities fraud at trial. Lay died in July 2006 while vacationing in his house near Aspen, Colorado, three months before his scheduled sentencing. A preliminary autopsy reported Lay died of a heart attack caused by coronary artery disease. His death resulted in a vacated judgment.

James Galante is an American convicted felon and associate of the Genovese crime family, owner of the defunct Danbury Trashers minor-league hockey team and a defunct racecar team fielding cars for Ted Christopher, and ex-CEO of Automated Waste Disposal (AWD), a company that holds waste disposal contracts for most of western Connecticut and Westchester and Putnam counties in New York.

Eddie Ray Kahn is an American tax protester. Kahn is currently in prison for tax crimes, with a tentative release date of 2026. Kahn founded the group American Rights Litigators and ran the for-profit businesses "Guiding Light of God Ministries" and "Eddie Kahn and Associates." According to the U.S. Justice Department, all three organizations are or were illegal tax evasion operations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enron scandal</span> 2001 accounting scandal of American energy company Enron

The Enron scandal was an accounting scandal involving Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. When news of widespread fraud within the company became public in October 2001, the company declared bankruptcy and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen – then one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world – was effectively dissolved. In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in U.S. history at that time, Enron was cited as the biggest audit failure.

Eugene E. "Gene" Stipe was an American politician from Oklahoma. He was a member of the Democratic Party.

The redemption movement is a debt-resistance movement and fraud scheme which is primarily active in the United States and Canada. The group alleges that a secret fund is created for every citizen at birth and that a procedure exists to "redeem" or reclaim this fund to pay bills, forming a foundational section of the pseudolaw movement. Common redemption schemes include acceptance for value (A4V), 'Treasury Direct Accounts' (TDA) and secured party creditor "kits," collections of pseudolegal tactics sold to participants despite a complete lack of any actual legal basis. Such tactics are sometimes called "money for nothing" schemes, as their aim is ultimately to extract money from the government by using secret methods. The name of the A4V scheme in particular has become synonymous with the movement as a whole.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Hittner</span> American judge

David Hittner is a senior United States District Judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He also has served by temporary assignment on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, as well as the U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of New York and the District of Arizona. His tenure as a federal jurist began in 1986, when he was nominated for the lifetime position by President Ronald Reagan and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Prior to his appointment to the federal bench in 1986, Hittner served from 1978 to 1986 as the elected judge of the 133rd Judicial District Court of Harris County, Texas, based in Houston.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federal Prison Camp, Bryan</span> Minimum security United States prison

The Federal Prison Camp, Bryan is a minimum-security United States federal prison for female inmates in Texas. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice.

Brian Kolfage is an American political activist, former United States Air Force airman, and convicted fraudster. He co-founded We Build the Wall, a private organization that purportedly aimed to construct a privately funded barrier on the Mexico–United States border; he pleaded guilty in 2022 to federal fraud and tax crimes for defrauding donors to the group.

Leonid Isaakovich Teyf is a Russian-Israeli businessman and white-collar criminal. He served as the deputy director of Voentorg, a company that contracted with the Russian Ministry of Defense to provide goods and services to the Russian Military.

References

  1. "Heiress In Handcuffs". Bloomberg. 24 November 2003.
  2. "A long fall for Enron couple". USA Today.
  3. "Lea Fastow pleads guilty in Enron case - May. 6, 2004". money.cnn.com. Retrieved 2022-10-12.
  4. "Andrew Fastow: A study in contrasts". 3 October 2002.
  5. "Fastow faces more charges; wife and 7 execs are indicted - May. 1, 2003". money.cnn.com. Retrieved 2021-07-19.
  6. "Fastow pleads guilty and agrees to cooperate in Enron case - Jan. 15, 2004". money.cnn.com. Retrieved 2021-07-19.
  7. "Lea Fastow to Complete Sentence at Halfway House". Los Angeles Times. Associated Press. 2005-06-07. ISSN   0458-3035 . Retrieved 2017-04-25.