“My second day in prison was probably the worst,” Swartz says one morning in the visitors room of the Oneida Correctional Facility in Rome, New York. In one corner, there’s a metal cage through which all visitors must pass. On one wall, inmates have painted a mural, a cheery scene of snowcapped mountains and ever­greens. There are about 30 tables with chairs. Each table is used by an inmate and his visitors, who sit next to him. Swartz sits at the table right in front of the guards’ desk; the guards always place him there because he’s in protective custody. Wearing green prison-issue pants and yellow work boots, he doesn’t look much different from the other inmates, except that he appears to be older than most. He is 47 but looks 57: His angular face is weathered and deeply lined, and he has a long, thin nose and a mop of curly brown hair. As he speaks, though, his expression becomes animated. It’s clear he enjoys having an audience for his stories.

“I was on the bus, chained up to the other inmates, when this guy behind me said, ‘Gimme your watch.’ ” Swartz’s voice drops to a growl, and he tries without much success to make a fierce face. “I’m kind of frozen, because before going into prison, I talked to some guys who’d spent some time inside. Their advice was ‘Don’t ever back down.’ So I knew there’s no way I’m giving this guy my watch. Then the guy says again, ‘Gimme the watch,’ and he looks like he’s getting mad. Now everyone on the bus is freaking out. We’re all chained together, and the guy next to me keeps saying, ‘Just give him the watch!’ I think he was more scared than I was. I’m trying to think of how to get out of this—who knows if this watch guy is going to be my cellmate later on?—so I changed the subject. I said, ‘Hey, any of you guys been in jail before? ’Cause this is my first time, and I’m not really sure of what I’m doing.’ Everyone started talking about Rikers”—a New York City jail complex located on an island in the East River—“and other places they’d been to, and by the end of our ride—I don’t want to say we were friends, but the guy who wanted my watch said, ‘You’re okay,’ and told me to look him up if we ended up in the same prison.” Swartz rolls his eyes and grins widely. “Now I’m thinking, If this is just Day 2 of my sentence, it’s going to be a long 25 years.”

As Swartz talks, it’s sometimes easy to forget that he’s talking about himself, or even that he’s in prison. He describes scenes as though he’s an outside observer of a strange and violent world. He seems relaxed and upbeat, and he shows his wry sense of humor. After describing the full-body strip searches he routinely endures, he says, “I feel sorry for the guards when they ask me to bend over. I wouldn’t want to look at that, let alone put my fingers there, even with gloves on.” As he’s talking, two guards walk over to a nearby table where a prisoner and his girlfriend are sitting. Suddenly, the guards take hold of the inmate and lead him away. Swartz later recounts what he learned through the prison rumor mill: The woman had brought in a balloon filled with drugs, which the inmate had swallowed. Swartz adds, “I’m a little worried about telling all these stories. I just don’t want to say anything that might make me out to be a snitch. That could make my life here really difficult.” He looks scared.

Swartz began serving his term at the Downstate Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Fishkill, New York. He was kept in protective custody because his wealth and high profile made him a target for other inmates. No one there remembered the details of his case, but everyone seemed to know he was somebody big. One guard, who had Swartz mixed up with Enron’s Jeff Skilling, told him, “I can’t believe you’re the guy who put all those people on the unemployment line.” Swartz told him, “That’s not me—I’m the Tyco guy.” The guard googled Tyco and later told Swartz that he was “not such a bad guy” and then asked whether he should buy Tyco stock for his I.R.A.  (Unlike Enron, Tyco never went out of business. At the end of June, its stock was up 25 percent from a year ago, and its current management recently split the company into three parts.)

Swartz says he has never been physically threatened, but he knows that the danger is always there. Once, in the prison yard, a man in solitary confinement shouted through his window slat for someone to point out Swartz to him. A fellow inmate helped Swartz by shouting back that he wasn’t in the yard that day.

Last May, Swartz was transferred to Oneida, a medium-security prison that’s a lot safer than Downstate. He’s still in protective custody; he sleeps alone in a 9-by-13-foot cell, which he is allowed to leave only for one hour of recreation during the day and again in the evening for his shift as night janitor. Of the 20 or so other inmates in protective custody, most are child molesters. Though Swartz is cautious, keeping mostly to himself, he has made a few friends. Swartz and his friends talk mainly about their lives on the outside and what they’ll do when they get out—tough subjects for Swartz, since most of the inmates on his cell block will be getting out long before he does. Many of the child molesters are in for three or four years; there is a rapist who’s in for five to 15. The only guys he’s met during his time in prison who are serving sentences longer than his are in for killing people. With good behavior and a friendly parole board, Swartz believes he could get out by 2012, when he’s around 52. “I try not to think about it,” he says quietly.

Fifteen hundred miles away, in Florida, Karen Swartz is cooking dinner. Bon Jovi’s “Bed of Roses” is playing in the background. Karen’s not much of a chef, and this is her first attempt to use the slow cooker her daughter-in-law gave her for Christmas. She has thrown some beef and vegetables into the pot and is hoping to have a palatable stew by the time her kids show up for dinner, as they do most Friday nights. The kitchen is bright, open, and massive. Its windows overlook a lush, well-manicured garden; beyond that is the Intracoastal Waterway. Outside, a warm breeze blows through the trees and stirs ripples on the pool. Peering down at the brownish-green mush in the pot, Karen sniffs, smiles, and says, “I’m a terrible cook.” A few hours later, after checking the stew again, she says, “Maybe we’ll just order.”