Exec gets prison in backdating case

The former human resources director of Brocade Communications Systems Inc. was sentenced Thursday to four months in prison and fined $1.25 million following her conviction for backdating stock-option grants.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco told Stephanie Jensen before sentencing her that he believed her remorse was genuine.

“The sentence is to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct,” Breyer said. “You have lived a very modest life. You have never used money in a flamboyant way.”

Jensen, 50, is the second executive to be sentenced after being convicted by a jury in a U.S. crackdown on stock-option manipulation that ensnared at least 200 companies.

Jensen’s boss, former Brocade Chief Executive Gregory Reyes, was convicted by a federal jury last year of conspiracy and fraud for backdating hundreds of employee option grants in 2001 and 2002.

Reyes was sentenced in January to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay a $15-million fine. He is free while appealing his conviction. Brocade, based in San Jose, is the largest maker of switches for data-storage networks.

Jensen, Brocade’s hiring chief from 1999 to 2004, created false board meeting minutes and other documents to help Reyes conceal from auditors that employee stock-option grants for newly hired workers had been backdated to increase their value, prosecutors said. She was convicted in December of conspiracy and falsifying records.