Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2005 | 10:53 a.m.
Martha Stewart's former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, will likely spend the next five months at Nellis prison camp scrubbing prison toilets or mopping floors for $15 a month, said a former high-profile inmate of the minimum security prison.
Bacanovic, a former Merrill Lynch & Co. stockbroker, began serving a five-month sentence at Nellis Federal Prison Camp on Tuesday, Traci Billingsley, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, said on Tuesday by telephone. She could provide no further information.
Bacanovic was convicted in March of lying to federal investigators about the sale of Martha Stewart's stock of ImClone Systems Inc. Stewart, who was convicted of the same offense, is serving a five-month sentence at a minimum-security prison in Alderson, W.Va., and is scheduled to be released in March.
"We are continuing to vigorously pursue an appeal on his behalf," said Bacanovic's attorney, Richard Strassberg, on Tuesday night.
Bacanovic, who is probably more accustomed to pushing stock trades than a broom, will most likely spend his time at Nellis working in the prison's kitchen performing basic maintenance for 6 to 8 hours a day, said Jay Cohen, who served 17 months of a 21-month sentence at the prison camp.
Cohen was convicted in a New York federal court in 2000 of violating the U.S. Wire Act in connection with an online sports betting business he was running out of Antigua. He was released in March 2004.
"Since he's there for such a short period of time, he'll get a maintenance job in the kitchen -- not a cook job," Cohen said, adding that five months would be considered a very short sentence at Nellis prison.
"Five months? People gave me a hard time because I had so little time to do," Cohen said.
Once known as a "country-club" prison for white-collar offenders, the 650-plus inmate prison at Nellis Air Force Base has changed in character, Cohen said. The prison now houses predominantly low-level drug offenders.
"I thought it would be all white-collar criminals, but it's not the white-collar haven it once was," he said, though adding, "It's not a hard-time prison."
Once settled into the prison, Bacanovic will be issued the standard work-boot and khaki uniform and will be housed with between five and 30 individuals, depending on space, Cohen said.
Cohen said he shared a bathroom with 50 to 60 people, and the facility had three urinals, three toilets, four showers and eight sinks.
The prison offers some amenities, such as two screenings of PG-rated films twice a night and a commissary where inmates can purchase candy, packaged food, non-standard issue clothing such as sweatpants and portable radios.
There were also plenty of activities, such as leather craft and painting classes, a running track and weight-lifting areas.
"If (Bacanovic) gets there early enough, he may have time to join the softball team," Cohen said.
Cohen, who earned a bachelor of science in nuclear engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, said that the one bright spot of his prison experience was helping 26 inmates earn high school diplomas.
But overall, the prison experience at Nellis is "miserable," he said.
Although the inmates have activities and basic employment, their lives are dictated by the prison rules and schedules. For example, he said there are six "bed-checks" throughout a 24-hour period -- at 4 p.m., 9:15 p.m., midnight, 3 a.m., 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. -- that prohibit anything but sporadic activity.
Plus, the toll prison takes on the inmate and the family members is often difficult, he said.
"The hardest part for me was thinking about how hard it was on my family," he said.
Fortunately, Cohen said, Nellis prison camp is not a highly violent prison, and while there were fights, there was little serious abuse.
Eventually, the boredom of being incarcerated in prison 24 hours a day is one of the largest challenges to serving a sentence, he said.
"There is a lot of card-playing -- Chinese poker, and chess and pinochle," he said.
He said the food is also quite bad -- so bad that he rarely ate the dinners of tasteless hamburgers or fish and subsequently lost 50 pounds.
He did, however, say the starchy breakfasts of cereal, pancakes and the occasional eggs were edible.
And lunch?
"I give high marks to the tuna salad," he said.
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