June 8, 2004 – A federal judge has postponed the long-awaited first criminal trial involving energy company Enron because the proceedings would probably overlap with the judge's vacation. Judge Ewing Werlein pushed back the trial until August 16 after he said he realized it wouldn't wrap up by July 9, as he had expected. The delayed fraud and conspiracy trial involves two officials at Enron who are accused of pushing through a sham sale of electricity-producing Nigerian barges to investment firm Merrill Lynch in order to boost Enron's reported earnings by about $12 million, making it falsely appear that the energy company met Wall Street's earnings expectations. Enron entered bankruptcy in 2001 because of accounting fraud, leaving thousands of employees without the vast majority of their pensions.
