Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Former Dynegy Inc. tax executive Jamie Olis will be released today from a halfway house in San Antonio after serving 5 years and three months in prison for distorting the energy trader’s 2001 financial statements.

Olis, 43, was originally sentenced to more than 24 years in prison on a 2003 fraud conviction for disguising a $300 million loan as cash flow in a scheme known as Project Alpha. Olis’s sentence was reduced to six years after a 2006 appeal upheld his conviction and found the trial judge had improperly calculated his sentence.

“Mr. Olis is scheduled for release on Aug. 8, but it will be on Aug. 7, because we don’t release inmates on weekends,” said LaTanya Robinson, public information officer at the federal community corrections center in San Antonio.

At trial, Olis argued he didn’t personally benefit from the fraud scheme and had acted with the knowledge and approval of Dynegy’s financial executives, two of whom were indicted with him. Both of those individuals, Olis’s former boss Gene Foster and Helen Sharkey, a subordinate in the tax department, pleaded guilty. Foster spent 15 months in prison and Sharkey served 30 days.

No one answered the phone yesterday at the house in northwestern San Antonio, where Olis’s wife of 20 years, Monica, moved from Houston about four years ago to be closer to her husband’s prison.

In an October 2007 interview, Monica Olis told Bloomberg News she visited her husband in prison every weekend, usually accompanied by the couple’s daughter, Josephine, who was an infant when her father was convicted.

Olis moved to the San Antonio halfway house in February, and Robinson said he is currently listed as being on home confinement. He must still serve three years of probation.

The case is U.S. v. Olis, H-03-CR-217, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas (Houston).

To contact the reporter on this story: Laurel Brubaker Calkins in Houston at laurel@calkins.us.com.

Last Updated: August 7, 2009 00:01 EDT