Officials Secretive on Whereabouts of Boesky

Less than a week before insider trader Ivan F. Boesky was to start serving a federal prison term, officials declined to discuss his whereabouts Friday. There were indications that he might already be in custody.

The mystery of the ex-financier’s location came against a background of death threats made against him, raising the possibility that he might have sought federal protection before his scheduled surrender date of March 24.

Boesky, the central figure in Wall Street’s biggest insider trading scandal, was sentenced to a three-year prison term for securities fraud last Dec. 18 by U.S. District Judge Morris E. Lasker.

The judge recommended that the ex-financier spend the time at a minimum-security prison in Lompoc, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles. He permitted Boesky to remain free until the surrender date.

But according to the Bureau of Prison’s computerized prison locater service in Washington, Boesky was listed as “in transit,” meaning he was no longer free on bail and was in custody.

Locater service dispatchers, who declined to be identified by name, said Boesky had been assigned a prisoner identification number, 139-87-054. The last three digits indicated he was in the jurisdiction of the U.S. Marshal’s Office in Manhattan, they said.

Flip Lorenzoni of the Marshal’s Office said he could not comment on Boesky’s whereabouts and referred inquiries to a regional office in Philadelphia.

That office referred questions to Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Kathryn Morse, who said a prison was chosen for Boesky a few weeks ago but she declined to identify it until after his arrival, in accordance with government policy. She would not comment on whether Boesky already had been placed in custody.

John Carroll, an assistant U.S. attorney handling the Boesky case, declined to discuss Boesky’s whereabouts, saying, “That’s not a question I’m inclined to answer.”

Boesky’s attorney, Theodore Levine, did not return repeated telephone calls to his Washington office.

Officials familiar with the federal prisoner assignment system said it was likely that Boesky would go to Lompoc, a former Army barracks near the Pacific Coast.

In a telephone interview, Lompoc Warden Richard Rison declined to confirm or deny Boesky’s impending arrival but said highly publicized prisoners tended to check in unannounced before their surrender deadline, in order to avoid press photographers at the gate.

“If I was speculating, I would say he won’t be here on the 24th,” Rison said. “I just wouldn’t believe he’d plan to come with a lot of fanfare.”

Rison said his remarks did not necessarily mean that Boesky had been assigned to Lompoc.

Formerly one of Wall Street’s best-known speculators, Boesky was fined a record $100 million in November, 1986, to settle charges of insider trading. Inside trading is the illicit use of confidential corporate information to profit in securities trading.

Under a plea-bargain arrangement, Boesky promised to cooperate in implicating others in exchange for pleading guilty to a single felony count--conspiracy to lie to the SEC, which carried a maximum punishment of five years’ imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.

Boesky’s cooperation has raised expectations of major indictments for securities fraud on Wall Street.

Last month John Mulheren, a former Boesky friend and fellow stock speculator, was arrested on charges he plotted to kill Boesky and a Boesky aide.