Reproduced by kind permission of COSMOPOLITAN ^© magazine. First published September 1999.

By Sophie Walker

In Lake County Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Florida, rows of thick metal doors grind along their tracks and shut behind you with a sound like a hammer blow. The corridors are endless, coated in thick, white gloss paint, hung with naked bulbs. The air is filled with disinfectant – not the hospital kind; this is louse killer. In the last room I enter – tiny, bare, and sunless – sits a young woman from Slough, Buckinghamshire. "Thank you for coming," she says, raising her chained-together hands to shake mine. "It’s so good of you – it means so much to see someone from home," she says with a weary smile. "Have you seen my mother?" she pleads. "What did she say? How is she? Tell her I love her, please."

I am Chantal’s first ‘contact’ visitor for four months (normally visitor’s sit behind a glass barrier, forbidden to touch) and she is overly grateful. "You’re the only person they’ve let me see," she says. "I tell my mother not to come. Seeing her, yet not being able to touch her is too painful. I can’t bear it. It’s so, so lonely." I see her tremble with nerves and it’s hard to believe just a year ago, Chantal was a happy, successful 20-something. Now, her once lean and fit body looks gaunt; the tanned, immaculately made-up face that smiled out of her wedding pictures is thin and grey. Chantal used to take her pick of designer clothes, now she only ever wears an orange prison smock. Her wrists and ankles are secured in brutal looking shackles that distort her walk into an agonizing shuffle, her movements horribly restricted.  Incredibly, she’s kept like this 24 hours a day. Yet Chantal McCorkle is no killer, no violent armed robber, no gang member. She is a gentle, intelligent woman facing an unbelievable cruel fate.

"I can’t think about my sentence," says Chantal. "I won’t believe it. I can’t. I’d go insane." Tears start running down her face and her voice breaks as she says, "I’ll be 53! I was planning to have a baby, now I’ll never be able to have children. I’ll be completely institutionalized. You see them here – the ones who’ve stayed for years. They can’t think for themselves. They’re like children. I don’t want to become like that. How can they do this? They can’t. They can’t… " She takes a deep breath, twists her hands together in anguish as she tries to convey her plight. "My cell is only 6ft by 8ft. My first cell-mate was a murderer. The second was a schizophrenic who killed her parents. Both of them will be out before me. My mother might be dead by the time I’m released". Her tears are flowing freely now. "I’m so sorry," she says, and wipes her eyes. Her mascara smears across her face. "Oh, my make-up!" she cries, suddenly embarrassed. "I don’t normally have to worry when I cry – there’s no one in here to care. No one trusts me. They don’t care what you’re in here for. To them, you’re here because you’re a bad person. We are all the same: murderers, drug dealers, me."

Most of all, Chantal is still in shock, unable to believe what has happened. "You never dream something like this will happen," she says. "I’m not a criminal. If you’d told me a year ago I’d be here, I’d have laughed." She casts her mind back to life before prison. "I met William 10 years ago," she says. "He was 22 – I was 20. We married and he started up the business the same year."

William McCorkle made videos and wrote books that taught people how they could make money by buying and selling repossessed houses from the courts. "There was nothing illegal about it," says Chantal. "He sold them on TV through infomercials (a hybrid of adverts and TV shows). He just said to people, ‘Look how well I’ve done through real estate – you can do the same.’

"We both worked really hard. He put every penny he made back into the business – we couldn’t even afford a place to live at first. We slept on friends’ floors. It took about seven years but the business boomed in 1996. It was going so well, I gave up my job to work for William. I did all the staff things: the canteen, the office, organized socials.

"What I don’t understand," she says, "is if we were doing something so illegal, why didn’t the government stop us before? It wasn’t as if they didn’t know. Everything was in our names. I mean – it was on TV."

The moment Chantal knew anything was wrong was one morning as she lay at home in bed. "It was 7:15am. There was a ‘Bang, bang, bang,’ at the door. I ran downstairs to open the door when all these men in uniform just burst in. They had guns drawn, and were shouting: ‘Who’s in the hour? Where are the weapons?’

"They forced me and William to sit there while they ransacked the house. They took everything: jewelry, money, business records, William’s cameras, and the cars…"

The McCorkles were told they were under investigation by the criminal unit of the IRS (the US tax office) "I just thought it was all a mistake," Chantal says.

Eighteen months later the couple were on holiday in Mexico when they received a phone call: "Our lawyer told us we were being charged with 90 counts of fraud and money laundering," she says, shaking her head in utter disbelief. "He faxed through the details. It was like …. How can they say these things?"

The McCorkles took the next plane home. "People ask why we didn’t make a run for it from Mexico. Our savings were in the Cayman Islands, so we could have left. We were just so sure we were innocent we wanted to clear things up. So we went to the police."

She holds her trembling fingers over her mouth in horror: "They arrested me there and then and took me straight to the state prison. They stripped me, hosed me down naked, sprayed all my body hair with louse killer. They threw me in a cell with a blanket – and told me to sleep on the floor. "There were some other women there and I asked one: ‘Why are you here? And she said ‘murder’. I was so terrified I couldn’t stop throwing up," she sobs.

The McCorkles’ bail was set at $300,000 (nearly £200,000). They were released two days later. Trial was set for 1 September.

"For 10 weeks we got up at six every day and went to court," says Chantal. "My husband’s attorney was so confident. The charges seemed so incredible: if we were money laundering, why were the accounts in our own names? We never did anything."

"When the call came to say the verdict was in, I just started shaking. William was saying ‘Calm down.’ The jury looked so solemn. It was like a dream. These people had my life in their hands. The judge said, ‘Have you reached a verdict? And then it started….

"Guilty … guilty … guilty … guilty …. Going through each charge. They got to 19 and William had a seizure – he was on the floor in convulsions. They pulled him outside. I was hysterical. Just shaking and crying, clinging onto my attorney saying, ‘I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t want to live. Please let me die.’"

The judge sentenced them both to 24 years and four months in prison. There is no chance whatsoever of parole. Chantal shakes her head in utter disbelief. "How could they come up with 24 years? It’s ridiculous. Even the prosecutor thought the most I would get was 15. I was given a higher sentence than if I’d been responsible for second degree murder, child prostitution or baby buying. And it wasn’t even my business. I’ve never even read the books or watched the videos, I did admin."

That night, Chantal was taken straight to prison. "I got to the jail and started throwing up. I was so hysterical they put me on suicide watch – in a cell, completely naked with a blanket and nothing else; no toilet paper, nothing. They feed you through a hole." They left me there for seven days; my attorney came to see me. He said William hadn’t had a heart attack; his blood pressure had crashed. It was the only thing that kept me going – the thought that he was alive."

THE PRESSURES OF PRISON LIFE

Chantal began life in prison. "At first I couldn’t eat," she says. I lost a stone. I lay in bed, crying. I didn’t shower. I just slept. I was so depressed. I wanted to die." But slowly she began to fight back. "I don’t know how but you draw on this strength. I thought, NO – remember the good things. People love you. They are fighting for you. You’re not going to rot in here. You have to be strong. "It’s hard," she says. "Every day it gets worse. I’m forbidden to see William – and he’s so upset. We write to each other. You know I haven’t seen the moon or stars for a year now. Everything has been taken away. "The worst time is 9.30pm when the lights are turned out. When I sleep, I dream I am free. Then I wake and realise I’m not with my husband, I am not with my family. Sometimes I wake up and see the wall and panic. I just repeat, ‘please God, help me. Please God, help me."

Chantal’s daily routine is always the same. "We’re woken at 6.30am and given breakfast," she says. "Then we go back to bed and sleep until 11am, when we’re woken for lunch. The food is starchy: pancakes, bread, mashed potato, cake – anything that’s filling and will keep us lethargic. In the afternoon I walk around the pod area (two floors of eight cells) for an hour – just for some exercise. I might do Bible studies. Then we have dinner at 4pm. At 4.30pm we’re locked in our cells for an hour and a half. Then at six, we get our mail. I walk for another hour – or got to church service. "Prison isn’t full of bad people, there’s just sorrow and pain. I know one girl with AIDS, another with Hepatitis. There are drug addicts, people who have no one. My last cell-mate was a 40-year-old woman who heard voices," she says. "She was on medication after serving 11 years for cutting off her parents’ heads because voices told her to."

Chantal still finds it difficult to talk about the trauma of hearing her sentence. "The people who love you feel so helpless," she says. "My mother had to go back to my house and pack up my clothes. She told me: ‘Chantal – it was like you were dead.’ "I think the US courts were harsh because we’re immigrants – me British, and William is from Mexico. We made good scapegoats: foreigners who ripped off tax-paying Americans. The prosecutor, Paul Bryon, told the press I had used my English accent and blonde good looks to fool people. He said I did it to give the product integrity. That it was a scam and we’d planned it."

Stephen Jakobi, Director of Fair Trials Abroad, the international human rights organization, says it is possible the case should never have even come to court – the McCorkles are victims of discrimination. "It’s our understanding US natives involved in similar behaviour are simply told to stop, rather than being prosecuted," says Jakobi. "This appears to be the first case of its kind under this particular legislation."

"I’m appealing," Chantal says. "But it will take about 18 months for the case to come up. If I were transferred to a UK jail I’d lose my right to appeal – and I’d still have to wait two years. My lawyer is desperate that I hang on. He says I have a fantastic case. But I don’t know: I’ve lost all faith in the US justice system. If I can be locked up for 25 years and I’m innocent, how can I win my appeal? I never imagined I’d be here. If someone had told me, I’d have said they were insane. But here I am – to stay."

Chantal stands up to say goodbye. "Which airline are you flying with?" she says. Her face lights up at the memory. Escape. Freedom. Then it hits me. God, this woman just wants to come home so badly. I don’t care what she’s done. I don’t give a damn. All I know is I want to get her out of here, to lead her by the hand and run really, really fast to the car. Because in a few hours she can get home. She can leave this place. And see her mother. And her best friend. And I think, what has happened to her could have happened to me.

The guard puts her hand on Chantal’s shoulder and leads her away. "See you soon," I say with a half wave. And then she stops. I look at her and think ‘But I won’t will I? She looks at me and I know she’s thinking exactly the same.

Chantal and her husband William appeared in a TV ad enjoying an opulent lifestyle – walking past a speedboat, next to a private plane with McCorkle’s name on it, and outside a huge Florida mansion. Buy the package for $69 (£40) – the sales pitch went – and you’ll receive a video and information pack to teach you how to make a fortune from selling property.

The court ruled because the boat, house, car, didn’t belong to William (they were hired for the video) he was defrauding the viewer.

On this basis, all the money they made through their business was considered illegal.

Sentencing in the US works on a points system. Chantal’s 90 convictions for fraud and money laundering added up to a total of 40 points, which, because the sentences run one after another – rather than concurrently – transfers into a sentence of 24 years to 30 years.

WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IN THE UK

Any complaints about the TV ad would have been made to the Advertising Standards Authority, which would have banned it, pending a legal inquiry.

• If the ASA had taken them to court, William’s longest sentence would have been five years – of which, with parole, he would have served two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half.
• It is unlikely Chantal would have been convicted, since the advertisements were produced by her husband.  If she had, it’s likely she would have been given a suspended sentence.
• At most she would have been imprisoned for 18 months – of which she would probably have served 9 months.

 

Chantal didn’t kill anyone. She didn’t physically harm another human being. She is not a danger to society. By any standards. Chantal’s 24 year sentence is extremely harsh. So how does it compare to other high-profile convictions?

THE MEGA-FRAUDSTER:

Nick Leeson

28-year-old Leeson, the fraudulent trader who single-handedly brought down Barings Bank was convicted in Singapore in 1995 of defrauding the shareholders out of $817m. This is almost 30 times more than the $45 (£28m) Chantal and William were convicted for. Leeson was sentenced to six years in jail. He served just three and was released in June this year.

 

THE NIGHTMARE NANNY:

Louise Woodward

19-year-old Woodward was sentenced to life in 1996 for the murder of Matthew Eappen, the baby of a Chicago couple for who she worked as a nanny. After a campaign by British officials, the conviction was reduced to involuntary manslaughter. She was released after 279 days.

 

THE SERIAL RAPIST:

Richard Baker

Baker was convicted of multiple rape and sexual assault in May this year. He was given four concurrent life sentences (i.e. he serves one life sentence). He will be eligible for parole within 12 years. This is his third prison term served for sexual crimes.