List Price: $1.995 million
Sale Price: $1.91 million
The Property: Michael Sears, the former Boeing chief financial officer who was imprisoned for a conflict-of-interest violation with an Air Force official, has sold a Gold Coast condo he had bought after serving his time. The 3,737-square-foot condo on the second floor of the Regent (at 190 East Walton Place) has four bedrooms, each with its own private bathroom, and a family room that opens onto a large terrace. It is one of the largest of 17 units at the Regent, which was built in 1996 on the same block that holds the Palmolive Building and the Drake and Knickerbocker hotels.  

Sears was Boeing’s CFO from 2000 until 2003. When Boeing shifted its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago in 2001, Sears and his wife, Debra, moved to Lake Forest. He was fired in November 2003 after it came to light that he had offered a job at Boeing to Darleen Druyun, a top U.S. Air Force staffer, while she was negotiating a $23-billion contract to buy a fleet of aerial refueling tankers from Boeing. Sears later pleaded guilty to a felony conflict-of-interest charge, and in 2005 he was sentenced to four months in prison and ordered to pay a $250,000 fine. Boeing paid a $615-million fine, and its CEO, Philip Condit, resigned. For her part in the affair, Druyun received a nine-month prison sentence.

Neither Michael and Debra Sears nor their real-estate agent could be reached for comment. The property was listed for just 12 days, and the sale closed on September 3rd. Public records do not yet identify the buyer.

Price Points: Michael and Debra Sears bought the condo in February 2006 for $1.675 million. That’s the second-highest purchase price for a condo at the Regent on record with Midwest Real Estate Data. The highest price is this $1.91-million sale. According to the listing sheet for the property, the couple renovated all four-plus bathrooms while they owned it.

Listing Agent: Joanne Nemerovski of Prudential Preferred Properties, 312-264-1200