Waseca, Minn. – The former Enron chief who once lived in a $4.7 million Mediterranean-style mansion in Houston’s toniest neighborhood will spend most of the next quarter-century with three other prison inmates in a converted college dorm room. Jeff Skilling, the former chief executive of Enron, reports today to the Federal Correctional Institute here to serve his 24-year sentence on fraud and conspiracy charges.
The low-security prison, which sits on the city limits of this town of 8,400 people 75 miles south of Minneapolis, has a low profile in the federal penal system and is little known even to most Minnesotans. While the surroundings will pale in comparison to Skilling’s former high-flying lifestyle, former staff and inmates at the prison said there are worse places to land.
“For me, it wasn’t the worst experience,” said the Rev. Chuck Butler, a retired Methodist minister from nearby Rochester. Butler spent three months in the prison in 2000 after several trespassing arrests for protesting on Georgia’s Fort Benning Army base. “The food they served was actually quite good.”
