Miami Former media mogul Conrad Black was released from a federal prison in Miami early on Friday after serving about three years for defrauding investors.
Bureau of Prisons spokesman Chris Burke did not give an exact time on when Black was released and said he didn't have any other details.
Black, whose empire once included the Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Telegraph of London, The Jerusalem Post and small papers across the US and Canada, had returned to prison last September to finish serving his sentence.
A former member of the British House of Lords, he had been sentenced to more than six years in prison after his 2007 conviction in Chicago, but had then been released on bail two years later to pursue an appeal that was partially successful. A judge reduced his sentence to three years and he returned to prison last September. With time off for good behaviour, he has completed his sentence.
Black's big chance to squash his convictions arose in June 2010, when the US Supreme Court sharply curtailed the disputed "honest services" laws that underpinned part of his case.
The 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago tossed out two of Black's fraud convictions last year, citing that landmark ruling. But it said one conviction for fraud and one for obstruction of justice were not affected by the Supreme Court's ruling. The fraud conviction, the judges concluded, involved Black and others taking $600,000 and had nothing to do with honest services: It was, they asserted, straightforward theft.
