Friday, October 24, 2008

Enron Inmates Shuffled

Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron Corp. chief convicted in the fraud that destroyed the energy trader, was moved to a low-security federal prison unincorporated Jefferson County, said U.S. Bureau of Prisons Spokeswoman Traci Billing.

The former chief executive officer of what was the world’s largest energy trader began serving his 24-year sentence at the federal prison in Waseca, Minnesota, in December 2006. Skilling, 54, was transferred this month when the Minnesota facility began conversion to a women’s prison, Billing said.

The facility, on South Kipling and US 285, houses 770 inmates, with 171 more in an adjacent minimum-security prison camp.

Skilling will remain incarcerated until 2028, so “his release date renders him ineligible for camp placement,” Billing said.

Skilling is awaiting a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans on an appeal of his 2006 conviction on 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud, lying to auditors and insider trading. Skilling was convicted with former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, whose verdicts were erased because Lay died before he could be sentenced.

Skilling’s friend and former colleague Kenneth Rice, former chief executive officer of Enron Broadband Services, also was moved to a different prison facility. Rice, 50, was serving his 27-month sentence at a federal prison camp in Beaumont, Texas, until he moved to a halfway house in Houston in August.

Read it all here.

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