December will be a watershed month for Andrew Fastow.

He celebrates his 50th birthday on Dec. 22.

The 10th anniversary of the bankruptcy of his former employer, Enron, is Dec. 2.

And his prison sentence ends on Dec. 17.

That last date will be more of a formality - he's been living at home for several months under in-home detention, an option the Bureau of Prisons offers for nonviolent offenders. But the date still represents a partial lifting of the legal cloud that has hung over the former Enron chief financial officer since late 2001.

Hard to get at

That was when the company began to fall apart after revelations that Fastow profited personally from a series of deals designed to help Enron keep debt off its balance sheet and manage volatile assets and liabilities. The company had to revise hundreds of millions of dollars in past profit reports because of in-house investigations of the deals.

Fastow was one of the earliest targets for investigators, but getting at him wasn't easy. First came charges against a trio of British bankers who did a deal with Fastow and his former right-hand man, Michael Kopper. Next came a plea deal with Kopper.

It wasn't until prosecutors charged his wife, Lea, with tax fraud and a trial was imminent that he agreed to cooperate. Lea Fastow spent a year in prison, and Fastow pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy and forfeited nearly $24 million in assets.

Fastow also agreed to testify against his former Enron bosses, Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, during their 2006 criminal trial - testimony seen as key in their convictions.

Part of their defense was that Fastow committed crimes without their knowledge.

A court later overturned Lay's conviction because he died before he was sentenced.

Cooperation cited

Fastow could have received up to 10 years in prison under his plea agreement, but U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Hoyt sentenced him to six years. Hoyt cited Fastow's cooperation with prosecutors, his work helping shareholders recover millions from banks that did deals with Enron, and the suffering his family endured.

"The family had taken a particularly acrimonious hit,'' Hoyt said during a September 2006 hearing.

Fastow served time in federal prisons in Texas and Louisiana, and was moved to a halfway house in downtown Houston on May 16. He was spotted at Temple Beth Yeshurun for services the following Saturday.

At some point in the last few months, Fastow was allowed to move into the same house he, his wife and their two sons lived in before Enron's collapse.

The two-story brick house is in the Southampton neighborhood, north of Rice University and blocks from a neighborhood park where flagstones are engraved with the names of families and companies that contributed to the park's upkeep. They include one for Weingarten Realty, the firm owned by Lea Fastow's family, and one for the Fastows' oldest son.

The house is valued at $944,000 on county tax rolls.

Probation conditions

Fastow is allowed to leave home for work, medical and religious reasons, but he must keep in contact with prison officials and will have to have regular contact with a probation officer over the next two years.

His total sentence will end up just short of five years and three months, with time off for his completion of a prison drug treatment program he took to cope with what he told the court was an addiction to anti-anxiety medication.

Fastow is now working full-time for the law firm that represented him in civil matters over the last decade, Smyser Kaplan & Veselka, using his business background under the job title "document review clerk."

"We've found him to be very intelligent, creative and meticulous," partner Lee Kaplan said. "We just gave him a raise, but he's making far less than his talents are worth."