Sometimes snarkiness is no substitute for the actual text of a newspaper story:
The River Oaks mansion of former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow has sold for $3.9 million to another local energy company CFO.
Thomas Hook, the CFO of privately held Hilcorp Energy, purchased the home at 3005 Del Monte with his wife, Laura. The 11,493-square-foot home was on the market for about $4.3 million through Greenwood King agent Karen Garrett.
Pause for a moment to marvel at how many times your own house could fit into 11,493 square feet.
Federal prosecutors claim Fastow built the home with laundered money, according to court documents, so the proceeds will be turned over to the U.S. Marshals Service until a judge rules on whether it was looted from Enron Corp.
Hmm. We may be onto a way to combat the federal budget deficit here.
Hook, the son of former American General Corp. Chairman Harold Hook, previously worked for Goldman Sachs in New York and in the Houston office of accounting firm Arthur Andersen.
Man, Enron and Arthur Andersen just go together like Denny’s and La Quinta, don’t they?
The house was built with the finest materials, but about $300,000 worth of work remains to be done before the house is finished, said Martha Turner of Martha Turner Properties.
The three-story house has six fireplaces, Italian blue flagstone flooring, a state-of-the art security system, museum-quality lighting for artwork, a large outdoor pool with whirlpool, a screened summer house and an oversized three-car garage with living space above.
Never would have guessed that the deed restrictions in River Oaks allow for garage apartments. Maybe they list it as servants’ quarters.
The Fastows still live in a Southampton home worth $700,000.
Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?
Maybe instead of finishing the house for a mere $300,000, they could instead build three new ones out in the burbs. Then they could shuttle back and forth between them so that assassins would never know which house’s meals to poison. Oh, wait… that’s Saddam. Nevermind.