Milken Tells Judge He Didn’t Seek Fame : Securities: In an emotional letter asking for leniency, he says he fears going to jail.

Michael Milken, in an emotional plea for leniency, has told a federal judge he “never sought notoriety” and was afraid of going to prison.

“I never dreamed I could do anything that would result in being a felon . . . but I did break the law. . . . I have no one to blame but myself,” Milken said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood. The 11-page letter, dated Nov. 5, was made public by the judge late Tuesday.

“All people, I am sure, have a fear of incarceration and separation,” Milken said. “I am not unique, and I too have those fears.”

He said he wrote the letter because he feels that he would be too emotional during his sentencing hearing to adequately express his feelings.

Milken, 44, the former head of Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc.’s junk bond department, pleaded guilty in April to six securities felonies. He faces a possible maximum sentence of 28 years in prison.

In his letter, he asked that he be allowed to use his skills to help children, pointing out that he has spent the past few years working with inner-city communities.

Besides his reputation as a financial wizard, Milken is also known as a generous philanthropist, having donated millions to charities and worked personally with underprivileged youth.

Although Milken was probably the most powerful and influential financier through the merger-crazy 1980s, he remains an unassuming family man who broke down in tears when he publicly admitted his guilt in federal court.

In his letter, he asked Wood to let him return to his quiet life.

“To those who I don’t even know, whom I’ve never met, who call me a symbol of the 1980s or a symbol of money and power, I say I’ve never sought notoriety,” he wrote. “Let me return to a life of anonymity if humanly possible for myself and my family.”

He said that one of the most painful experiences during the past four years has been “the assault on the sincerity of my beliefs, my moral system and my basic inner being.”

“I have been forced to face the challenge that not only am I portrayed as a fraud, but everything my life stood for is called a fraud and all the principles I have spoken about my whole life are hollow. At times, this has been almost too difficult to bear.”

Wood had previously said that Milken would be sentenced this week. However, as of late Tuesday no date had been set.