April 19, 2019
Hassan Nemazee, who has spent the last 8-1/2 years of his life sitting in federal prisons, was freed just before Now Ruz under a new law that allows aged prisoners to get out of jail early.
Nemazee, 69, will serve the remainder of his sentence, until November, under a form of limited house arrest. He is living in a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment lent to him at no cost by a friend.
The new law, signed by President Trump in December, is called the First Step Act. It is part of a process of criminal justice reforms intended to put less emphasis on jailing offenders.
The Bureau of Prisons said that 23 prisoners have so far been judged eligible for the early release of those aged over 60. Nemazee was the 10th released to home confinement.
In an interview with The New York Times published April 13, Nemazee said his vast wealth is now all gone. He pleaded guilty to fraud and had to give up his $18 million Park Avenue home, an estate in southern Italy, a blue Maserati, shares in a yacht and private airplane, plus $93 million in cash and stock. His wife also divorced him.
He was sentenced to 12-1/2 years in prison, but that has been reduced to about nine years for good behavior and the term will end in November.
Nemazee told The New York Times that the friend who has lent him the apartment for free is president of a group of insurance companies, and has also hired him as a senior adviser. He would not identify the friend.
Nemazee said that before entering prison, he took to heart the advice of another friend, who told him: “‘Hassan, people view a prison sentence as a loss of time. I suggest you view it as a gift of time.’”
At a low-security facility in Texarkana, Texas, and prison camps at Otisville, New York, and Cumberland, Maryland, he said he kept busy writing and reading, exercising, mentoring other inmates and spending “countless hours deep in thought.”
He wrote a memoir, “Persia, Politics and Prison,” and a political thriller. At Cumberland, he also worked as a librarian.
“I hope I’ve not wasted a minute spent in prison,” Nemazee said.
He did miss his oldest daughter’s marriage and the births of his three grandchildren, he said, and “caused unimaginable harm to my ex-wife and family.”
“I am one of the fortunate who have had the love and affection of family and friends remain constant throughout my entire incarceration,” Nemazee added. “The majority of those imprisoned are not so fortunate.”
Everyone at Cumberland kept informed of the negotiations over the First Step Act through television, newspapers and calls from outside, he said.
On December 21, when Trump signed the bill, Nemazee applied for release “effective immediately. I had my application ready. Just needed to fill in the date,” he said.
Nemazee is best known in the United States—and warranted The New York Times’ interview—because he was a major campaign fund-raiser for Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton. There was a certain irony to the fact that he, of all people, is among the first to benefit from a new law signed by Donald Trump, the nation’s premier Hillary-hater.
In home confinement, Nemazee does not wear an ankle bracelet, but officials may call him on a landline late at night or early in the morning to verify he is at home. He may be summoned for a urine test at any time and must submit his weekly schedule for approval, he said.
Still, it feels a lot like freedom. He may leave his apartment to go to work, the gym, religious services or appointments with his doctors and lawyers. He may also go out to lunch, “which is always a treat, given where I have been the last eight and a half years.”
“Home confinement is a huge improvement over prison in every respect,” Nemazee said.
Nemazee was charged in 2009 with using fake account statements and forged signatures to show he had collateral worth hundreds of millions of dollars to fraudulently obtain $292 million in loans from Bank of America, Citibank and HSBC.
He used the funds to buy and maintain luxury properties, make financial investments and contribute some $2 million in political donations and charitable gifts, the government said.
“Pride, ego, arrogance, self-image, self-importance — all of these and more are among the reasons why I traveled down this destructive path,” he told Judge Sidney H. Stein of Federal District Court at his sentencing in Manhattan.
Judge Stein called Nemazee’s crime “breathtaking in its brazenness, in its scope.”
Nemazee was born in the United States, but did not become a citizen by birth. His father was an Iranian diplomat assigned to Washington and diplomats’ children do not get US citizenship by birth in the United States. Nemazee became a US citizen after the revolution.