Lea Fastow

Lea Weingarten Fastow was a former Enron Assistant Treasurer who later led the company’s Art Committee from 2000 to 2001, overseeing an ambitious $20 million effort to build a world-class contemporary art collection. The daughter of a prominent Houston real estate family, she worked at Enron from 1991 to 1997 before leaving to raise her children. In 2004, she became the second former Enron executive to be imprisoned following the company’s collapse when she pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return related to unreported income from the RADR special purpose entity, serving one year in federal custody. She is married to Andrew Fastow, Enron’s former Chief Financial Officer.

The Enron email corpus contains 400 mentions of Lea Fastow across various correspondents’ archives, primarily documenting her leadership of the Art Committee in 2000. She did not have her own PST archive in the corpus, as she was no longer an Enron employee during the period covered by the dataset. Her communications appear through an external email address as a volunteer committee leader rather than a company employee.

Early Life and Education

Lea Weingarten was born into one of Houston’s most prominent Jewish families. Her mother, Miriam Hadar Weingarten, won the Miss Israel competition in 1958, and her father, Jack Weingarten, was a real estate broker descended from the Weingarten supermarket chain family. The main pavilion at the Jewish Community Center of Houston bears the name of her grandfather, Joseph Weingarten, a Polish immigrant who built grocery store and real estate empires in the Southwest through J. Weingarten Incorporated and Weingarten Realty Investors.

Growing up in River Oaks, Houston’s wealthiest enclave, Lea attended private college preparatory school. Her parents divorced in 1970. She went on to attend Tufts University, where she met her future husband Andrew Fastow. The two married in 1984. She later earned an MBA with a finance focus from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in August 1987.

Career at Enron

Corporate Finance (1991-1997)

Lea Fastow joined Enron in May 1991, rising to the position of Director and Assistant Treasurer of Corporate Finance. Her tenure overlapped with her husband’s ascent through Enron’s finance organization. Andrew Fastow became Enron’s Chief Financial Officer in 1998, the year after Lea had already departed.

She left Enron in May 1997 to care for the couple’s firstborn son. Though she stepped away from full-time employment, she would maintain close ties to the company through her husband’s position and, eventually, through her volunteer leadership of the Art Committee.

Art Committee Leadership

In 2000, Lea Fastow took on leadership of Enron’s in-house Art Committee, coordinating a program with a reported $20 million budget and a mandate to assemble a world-class collection of contemporary art for the company’s Houston headquarters. The committee brought together Enron executives with leading figures from the Houston art world, including Ned Rifkin, director of the Menil Collection, and Barry Walker, curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Email evidence shows the committee was active by March 2000. Calendar entries from Steven Kean’s archive dated March 9, 2000, reference “Mtg w/ Mike McConnell, Lea Fastow, re Art committee per Cathy Phillips.” Additional participants in committee activities included Bill Donovan and, at various points, executives Jeffrey Shankman and Ken Lay.

Vision and Ambition

A November 12, 2000, email from Lea Fastow to Mike McConnell reveals the sophistication and scale of the Art Committee’s ambitions. Writing to prepare for a presentation to CEO Jeff Skilling scheduled for December 6, she outlined an agenda that included discussing the collection’s vision, introducing the museum professionals advising the committee, describing art locations throughout Enron’s buildings, and establishing the decision-making process going forward. She noted that she was “assembling a detailed list of potential art locations by floor (including dimensions when possible) so that we have a Master from which to work.”

The same email demonstrated her engagement with internationally renowned artists. She reported that she had “asked Bill Viola (the video artist for the work we are considering) to come down to Houston to meet with us and with Gensler to discuss where his piece might fit in the new building.” She had also contacted the architects at Pelli to arrange a meeting with “a wonderful up and coming artist (Olafur Eliasson) who would like to propose a ‘water piece’ for the circular drive.” As she noted, “Eliasson is very well respected and innovative: He’s created waterfalls that flow ‘up’ and wonderful minimal installation pieces that are quite beautiful.”

Calendar entries from December 2000 confirm these high-profile artist meetings took place. On December 6, 2000, the calendar shows “Mtg: Lea Fastow & Bill Violla (Artist).” Two days later, on December 8, another entry records “Mtg: 4499, Lea Fastow, Bill Donova & Jeff Koons, artist (Antioch Park).” Jeff Koons was then and remains one of the world’s most expensive living artists.

Art Acquisitions

The committee moved beyond planning to actual acquisitions during 2000. In her November email, Lea Fastow noted that “Enron has purchased the Alex Katz painting that is currently hanging in 50M,” asking McConnell to call her “so I can brief you on how that happened.” Jeffrey Shankman’s reply the next day suggested some uncertainty about budget allocations: “I’d like to know how we purchased the Katz. Was that outside our budget, and in Ken’s dining room budget?”

This exchange indicates that Enron maintained multiple art budgets, with the Art Committee’s allocation potentially separate from funds designated for executive dining room decor.

The RADR Transaction

While Lea Fastow’s Art Committee work reflected her legitimate volunteer activities after leaving Enron, her involvement in the RADR special purpose entity represented a darker chapter. The scheme, which predated her public-facing Art Committee role, led to her criminal conviction.

Wind Farm Tax Benefits

The RADR transaction centered on Enron’s California wind farms, which qualified for government tax benefits as “qualifying facilities.” However, when Enron acquired Portland General Electric, the company risked losing this favorable status because utilities could not maintain qualifying facility eligibility.

According to the Department of Justice indictment, Lea Fastow and coconspirators devised a plan in which a special purpose entity called RADR appeared to purchase part of Enron’s wind farm interests. In reality, Enron retained secret control while using nominees to disguise their involvement and maintain the tax benefits.

Investment and Returns

In May 1997, the same month Lea Fastow left Enron, she and Andrew transferred $419,000 to Michael Kopper, another Enron executive who became a cooperating witness in the government’s investigation. Kopper then provided the money to nominees who served as the apparent outside investors in RADR. Enron itself funded 97% of the $17 million purchase price through loans.

The investment proved extraordinarily lucrative. Just three months later, in August 1997, the Fastows received $481,850 from RADR proceeds, yielding over 50% annual returns on their investment. Between 1997 and 2000, they received tens of thousands in additional distributions.

Concealment Scheme

To hide their participation and avoid IRS reporting obligations, the defendants employed several deceptive tactics. According to the DOJ indictment, they disguised RADR income as “gifts” and interest from purported loans. Lea Fastow allegedly caused her father to file a false tax return by mischaracterizing a breakup fee as loan interest. The couple deliberately avoided triggering IRS gift reporting requirements by structuring checks for $10,000 or less.

From December 1997 through 2000, Lea Fastow failed to report $204,444.34 in family income from the RADR special purpose entity. As the Department of Justice stated, she “intentionally failed to report the income on their joint federal income tax returns.”

Criminal Prosecution

Indictment

On May 1, 2003, a federal grand jury returned a six-count indictment charging Lea Fastow with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy, and four counts of filing false individual income tax returns for the years 1997 through 2000. The charges carried substantial potential prison time.

Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson announced the charges as part of the broader Enron Task Force investigation that was pursuing multiple executives, including Andrew Fastow, who faced a separate 98-count indictment.

Plea Negotiations

The path to resolution proved complicated. In January 2004, Lea Fastow initially pleaded guilty to a felony tax crime under a deal that required U.S. District Judge David Hittner to agree to a sentence of five months in prison and five months of home confinement.

Judge Hittner rejected this plea agreement, finding the proposed sentence inadequate. Lea Fastow subsequently withdrew her felony plea, and prosecutors filed a misdemeanor charge in its place. She then pleaded guilty to one count of filing a false federal income tax return, a misdemeanor carrying a maximum sentence of one year’s incarceration. The original felony charges were dismissed pursuant to this agreement.

The couple coordinated their legal strategies to ensure their two young sons would have at least one parent at home. Andrew Fastow pleaded guilty on January 14, 2004, to two counts of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud, agreeing to cooperate fully with the Enron investigation and serve a 10-year prison sentence.

Sentencing

On May 6, 2004, Lea Fastow was sentenced to one year in jail and one year of supervised release. The court rejected the joint recommendation from prosecutors and defense for a split sentence of five months incarceration and five months home confinement, instead imposing the maximum one-year sentence. She was not eligible for “good time” credit, which normally reduces federal sentences by approximately 15%.

As part of her resolution, Lea Fastow relinquished claims to nearly $30 million in forfeited funds seized by the Enron Task Force in May 2003. These funds were designated for distribution to Enron fraud victims.

Imprisonment

Lea Fastow reported to the federal detention center in downtown Houston on July 12, 2004, becoming the second former Enron executive to go to prison following the company’s December 2001 collapse due to fraud.

In June 2005, she was transferred to the Leidel Comprehensive Sanction Center, a halfway house located a few blocks away in Houston, to complete the final six weeks of her sentence. She was released from the halfway house just after midnight on July 11, 2005, ending exactly one year in federal custody. She then remained under the supervision of a federal parole officer for another year.

Andrew Fastow began serving his sentence after his wife completed hers, as the couple had negotiated, allowing their sons to have at least one parent present throughout. He was ultimately sentenced on September 26, 2006, to six years in prison, a substantial reduction from the 10-year term originally contemplated, reflecting his cooperation with prosecutors in cases against other Enron executives.

Legal Status

Lea Fastow pleaded guilty in 2004 to one misdemeanor count of filing a false federal income tax return. She served one year in federal custody from July 2004 to July 2005, followed by one year of supervised release. She forfeited claims to approximately $30 million in assets seized by the Enron Task Force.

Post-Prison Life

After her release, Lea Weingarten dropped her married name Fastow, returning to her maiden name. As she later explained, “I decided to do it when I realized that the name Fastow doesn’t completely describe me. I’m not the sum total of that name.”

Drawing on the expertise she developed while leading Enron’s Art Committee, she established an art consulting firm called Contemporary Connoisseurs. She curated public exhibitions in Houston, including “PAPERcut,” a collaboration with Jose Solis and Stephen Hempel, and “If Nothing Else Matters.” Her return to the Houston art world represented an attempt to rebuild her professional identity around the legitimate artistic interests she had cultivated during her time coordinating Enron’s ambitious collection.

References

The research for this article draws on 400 mentions of Lea Fastow in the Enron email corpus, primarily from the archives of Steven Kean and Jeffrey Shankman, documenting her Art Committee activities in 2000. Secondary sources include Department of Justice charging documents and press releases, news coverage from Bloomberg, Houston Chronicle, NBC News, CBC News, and CultureMap Houston. Key government documents include the DOJ indictment of Lea W. Fastow (May 2003) and the sentencing announcement (May 2004).