CHICAGO – Conrad Black is about to trade his fancy 17,000-square-foot beachfront mansion for a prison cell that’s smaller than his walk-in closet.
A federal judge yesterday sentenced the dethroned press baron to 6½ years behind bars for swindling millions from investors in his Chicago newspaper company and for trying to cover up the crime by sneaking boxes of documents out of his Toronto office.
Government prosecutors asked that Black, 63, be cuffed and taken into custody immediately.
But Judge Amy St. Eve took pity on the 6-ft., 1-inch silver-haired tycoon and said she would allow him to spend a few more months out on bail to get his affairs in order.
On March 3, he must report to prison, where he will be strip-searched, forced to give a DNA sample, and fitted for an orange jumpsuit.
He could end up cleaning toilets or mopping floors, both prison jobs start out paying about 12 cents an hour.
“I frankly cannot understand how someone of your stature, at the top of the media empire, could engage in the conduct you engaged in and put everything at risk,” Judge St. Eve told a pale-faced Black as he stood before her in court dressed in a blue-gray suit.
Before the sentence was read, one of Black’s lawyers made a plea for leniency, saying that his client isn’t the arrogant aristocrat often portrayed in the media.
He noted that Black’s wife, the glamorous conservative columnist Barbara Amiel, gave him sleeping pills and blood pressure medication to help him cope through the nearly four-month trial – a sign he wasn’t the unfeeling brute many imagined.
The lawyer also pointed to a letter Elton John wrote to the judge on Black’s behalf. The British pop star noted Black’s support for his AIDS charity – both financial and otherwise – and described him as someone who would “stick with you through thick and thin.”
As she sentenced Black, Judge St. Eve said she wanted to send a strong message to other corporate executives about the price they might pay for committing similar financial shenanigans.
But she ended up giving him far less than the whopping 24-year jail term prosecutors were seeking because the jury only ended up convicting him of four of the 13 charges against him when they found him guilty in July.
In another small victory, she is allowing Black to keep the proceeds from the sale of his expensive Park Avenue apartment and his Palm Beach mansion, rather than forfeiting the assets as prosecutors had sought.
Black also was ordered to pay a $125,000 fine and return the $6.1 million he was convicted of looting from investors in his newspaper company, Hollinger International – far less than the $32 million penalty prosecutors sought.janet.whitman@nypost.com