(03-19) 10:45 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A former executive of Brocade Communications Systems was sentenced to four months in federal prison and fined $1.25 million Wednesday for conspiring to backdate employees' stock options and conceal the effects on the company's finances.

Stephanie Jensen, 50, of Los Altos, former human resources director of the San Jose company, was the second Brocade executive to be convicted in the nation's first criminal trials for stock option backdating. The company's former chief executive, Gregory Reyes, was sentenced to 21 months in prison in January for 10 felony convictions.

Both sentences were imposed in San Francisco by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who allowed Jensen and Reyes to remain free while they appeal their convictions. Jensen's sentence also includes three months in a halfway house after her release from prison.

Jensen was convicted in December of one count of conspiracy and one count of falsifying company books and records for plotting with Reyes for several years to keep their compensation practices off Brocade's ledgers.

The prosecutions are the result of an investigation by the San Francisco U.S. attorney's office and the Securities and Exchange Commission into alleged abuses of backdating, a common method of increasing the value of employee stock options.

Options allow an employee to buy stock at a specified price. The price is usually set on the date that the option was granted but can also be backdated to a time when the stock was selling for less, yielding an immediate paper profit.

The practice is legal as long as it is reported accurately. But it is illegal to conceal backdating from federal regulators and investors, preventing them from assessing a company's actual expenses and financial status.

The federal investigation has led to the firings or resignations of dozens of executives and to corporate disclosures of billions of dollars in previously unreported expenses.

Brocade, which makes data storage networking products, agreed in May to pay $7 million to settle a backdating suit by the SEC. The company issued financial restatements in January 2005 that increased its reported net loss for fiscal 2003 and 2004 by $41 million and reduced its income for 1999 through 2002 by $238 million.

Jensen became Brocade's vice president for human resources in October 1999 after 20 years in personnel jobs at high-tech companies, starting with an entry-level position at Apple Computer. She left Brocade in February 2004.

Prosecutors said Jensen conspired with Reyes from 2000 onward to conceal the effect of backdating on Brocade's finances while offering backdated options to attract talent in the competitive Silicon Valley market. They said Jensen, who was responsible for the company's personnel records, prepared documents for Reyes' approval listing fictitious board meetings and employee hiring dates at which the options were allegedly approved.

Defense lawyer Jan Little said Jensen had merely provided information to Reyes, that the CEO had complete authority over employee compensation and that he had chosen the most lucrative dates for the options.

Jensen's "principal wrong ... was not one of design, but rather of inaction, in not questioning more forcefully the direction she received from her superiors," Little said in written arguments to Breyer.

She argued against a prison term for Jensen and asked for either probation or a period of home confinement. Prosecutors sought a six-month prison sentence.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Crudo, one of Jensen's prosecutors, said Breyer's sentence Wednesday recognized the seriousness of the crime.

"The integrity of the capital markets in this country is fundamentally grounded on the honesty of executives of public companies, and when they falsify a company's books and records and auditors, regulators and shareholders are misled as a result, there are real consequences to real victims," Crudo said in a statement.

Little declined to comment after the hearing.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Drunkorexia: The worrying phenomenon where young women replace food with booze

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Calorie count: Each glass adds up

The phenomenon of "drunkorexia", as it has been called, is most common among university students faced with the conflicting pressures of heavy drinking and staying slim.

Realising they are going to have to drink to fit in but not wanting to put on any weight, "drunkorexics" will cut back on calories ahead of a night on the town.

Some will simply forgo a chocolate bar or regular treat, while others will routinely skip meals.

Denying themselves two biscuits would allow them to drink three vodka and diet colas without fear of putting on weight, while skipping the 700 calories of spaghetti bolognese gives them the freedom to indulge in four or five alcopops.

Louise Noble, chief dietician at the Berkshire Healthcare Trust, said there was huge pressure on women at university to drink and also look thin.

"In my experience, many young women will find the only way they can cope with both is to drink rather than eat, to substitute alcohol for food," she said.

"There is more social pressure on them to drink rather than to eat.

"It is easier not to eat because it doesn't invite comment.

"I am seeing more girls who want to know how they can cut down their food intake to allow themselves to drink."

The lack of food in their system ensures they get drunk quicker and raises the risk of them passing out ? with all the dangers that entails.

Mrs Noble, an expert in eating disorders, said the problem was heightened by images of celebrities "lauded" for staying stick-thin while maintaining a hectic social schedule.

"It seems to be socially acceptable to drink a lot and be seen falling out of a club drunk in the early hours of the morning," she said.

"You can't get x calories from food and y calories from alcohol and stay thin.

"The social pressure seems to be very much in favour of drinking being OK."

It is thought the demands of university life ? including peer-pressure to drink ? can set off anorexia in some young women.

In other cases, an already existing problem is made worse.

Emma Healey, of the charity beat, formerly known as the Eating Disorders Association, said: "To us, it wouldn't seem any different to the person who cuts carbs out of their diet.

"An eating disorder is a coping mechanism ? it is a way of making sense of a world that seems utterly chaotic.

"We should be focusing on the feeling and mental health of the person, rather than the behaviour."

More than a million Britons suffer from eating disorders, with those between 14 and 25 at greatest risk.

Recent studies have shown links between eating disorders and alcohol abuse, with up to a third of bulimics struggling with alcohol or drugs and 36 per cent of women receiving treatment for alcohol abuse also confessing to eating problems.

Eating disorders, which affect around ten times as many women as men, can be fatal in severe cases.

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