The chilling prospect of prison only highlights the spectacular fall from grace of Brooks and Taubman. The first woman to be head of a major auction house, Brooks officiated over highly visible auctions, such as that of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' estate, in her Chanel suits and blond bob the very picture of patrician success. Taubman, with the purchase of Sotheby's, transformed himself from an arriviste billionaire shopping-mall magnate into an old-money grandee instantly imbued with the whiff of high society and old masters.
Now the two face a battalion of US attorneys eager to see them serve time in prison. Taubman is scheduled to be sentenced April 2 if he does not file an appeal, Brooks some time after. The two face up to three years in prison, and fines.
Sickler, the consultant, said that Taubman would probably receive a jail sentence, because federal guidelines generally require that a defendant who pleads not guilty before a jury in federal court and is subsequently convicted is required to serve time. Brooks, because she cooperated with the government, may not end up going to jail, but that possibility is remote, several criminal lawyers said.
A spokesman for Davis, Polk & Wardwell, the law firm representing Taubman, said it was too early to comment, and Stephen Kaufman, Brooks' lawyer, said he did not want to discuss the matter.
Marcia Shein, an Atlanta lawyer who specializes in sentence mitigation, said that a judge would take into consideration the convict's residence, but that Brooks, if she is sentenced to prison, could be sent to any number of women's facilities around the country. "The Bureau of Prisons does not have to follow the recommendation," Shein said. "They could send her anywhere. But I don't think she is going to wind up in Leavenworth," a notorious maximum security prison in Kansas.
Depending on a number of criteria, Brooks could serve in prisons in Marianna or Tallahassee, Florida, or in Danbury, Connecticut, where Leona Helmsley served 21 months for tax evasion.
Life in the minimum-security prisons and "Club Feds" for white-collar criminals offer a few perks that most prisons don't have. "You can wear whatever you want," Stanton said. "There are no cells where these two might be going. They have private rooms. There are recreational facilities. This is not exactly Oz."
He did not mean the Emerald City, but the HBO series about a maximum-security prison.
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