Andy Fastow - Biography

Last Editor: buki_buki_pz				Andy Fastow Biography -   Name : Andy Fastow Date of birth : 22-Dec-1961 Place of birth : Washington, DC Executive summary : Disgraced CFO of Enron

Andy Fastow Trivia -

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Andy Fastow Detailed Biography -

Andrew Stuart Fastow (born 22 December 1961) was the chief financial officer of Enron Corporation until the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into his conduct in 2001. Fastow was one of the key figures behind the complex web of off-balance sheet special purpose entities (limited partnerships which Enron controlled) used to conceal their massive losses. Fastow was born in Washington, DC, the middle child of three sons. His father worked in merchandising for a drug store chain. He grew up in New Providence, New Jersey, where he was student council president and on the tennis team and in the school band during high school. He was the sole student representative on the New Jersey State Board of Education. Fastow graduated from Tufts University in 1983 with B.A.s in economics and Chinese. While there, he met his future wife, Lea Weingarten, whom he married in 1984. Her family had founded a grocery store chain in Houston and later entered the real estate business. Fastow and Weingarten both earned MBAs at Northwestern University and worked for Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company in Chicago. While there, he helped pioneer a system of raising capital by selling notes backed by risky loans. The practice spread across the industry "because it provides an obvious advantage for a bank," noted the Chicago Tribune. "It moves assets off the bank's balance sheet while creating revenue." Continental became the largest U.S. bank to fail during the Savings and Loan crisis. Based on his work at Continental, Fastow was hired in 1990 by Jeffrey Skilling at Enron. On October 31, 2002, Fastow was indicted by a federal grand jury in Houston, Texas on 78 counts including fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy. On January 14, 2004, he pled guilty to two counts of wire and securities fraud, and agreed to serve a ten-year prison sentence. He also agreed to cooperate with federal authorities in the prosecutions of other former Enron executives. Fastow, although convicted, remains out of prison until completion of the investigation. On May 6, 2004, his wife, Lea W. Fastow, a former Enron assistant treasurer, pled guilty to a misdemeanor tax charge and was sentenced to one year in a federal prison in Houston, and an additional year of supervised release. She was released to a halfway house on 11 July 2005.