Sep. 28--Former Enron Broadband CEO Joe Hirko was sentenced this morning to 16 months in prison for his role in hyping the performance of the collapsed company's business through false press releases.

Hirko agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud last October, just weeks before he was set to go to trial for the second time. The single charge had a maximum sentence of 16 months versus the many years he could have faced if a jury had convicted him in trial.

Enron Broadband Services was a business created by the former energy giant in the late 1990s to create a market for high speed data services, including video-on-demand.

Hirko and four others in the business unit were accused of pumping up the potential of EBS' data network to investors in early 2000 to enrich themselves by selling shares inflated by the hype. Two of them, EBS co-head Ken Rice and Chief Operating Officer Kevin Hannon, pleaded guilty before going to trial.

Hirko and the other two, Scott Yeager and Rex Shelby, went to trial in 2005. After three months of testimony a jury acquitted them on some counts but were deadlocked on the rest. The three were set to face retrials in two separate, slimmed-down cases.

Hirko pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud for allowing press releases to be distributed that said a groundbreaking operating system on Enron's broadband network would allow users to pay for bandwidth as they used it rather than paying a flat monthly fee. However, the operating system, known as BOS, was still under development.

The plea deal requires Hirko to forfeit $7 million in cash and about $1.7 million in deferred compensation to the government. His sentencing was scheduled for March 3.

Earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Yeager could not be retried because the jury acquitted him of other charges related to the same alleged scheme. Shelby has made a similar appeal.

tom.fowler@chron.com

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