Lea Fastow

Lea Weingarten Fastow (born December 1961) is the wife of former Enron executive and convicted felon Andrew Fastow, and is the second former Enron executive to go to prison after Enron collapsed due to fraud in December 2001.

Lea Fastow is a native of Houston, Texas, where she was born into a Jewish family that founded the J. Weingarten Incorporated [1] grocery store chain and Weingarten Realty Investors WRI. She graduated from Tufts University, where she met her future husband, and earned an MBA at Northwestern University. She and her husband are both Jewish and married in 1984 and have two children.

In 2003, Lea 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. Lea Fastow pled guilty on 14 January 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 (see 26 U.S.C. § 7206). Her husband pled guilty to separate charges. As a result of her husband agreeing to plead guilty and to become an informant against his fellow executives in order to receive a reduced sentence, Andrew Fastow agreed to serve a maximum of ten years in prison; he was sentenced in September 2006 to six years in prison followed by two years of community service.

Lea Fastow reported to prison on 12 July 2004 and was released to a halfway house on 11 July 2005.

References

• Reuters (12 July 2004). Lea Fastow arrives early for prison.
• United States v. Lea W. Fastow (PDF)

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Mrs. Fastow's sister is Jill Oriane Tarlau, the first wife and mother of the children of Peter Magowan, b.1942.