Drexel Aide’s Sentence for Lying Reduced : Wall Street: Lisa Jones was convicted in March, 1989, of seven counts of perjury in front of a grand jury investigating the brokerage.

NEW YORK —  Lisa A. Jones, a teen-age runaway who became a $100,000-a-year trading assistant at Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., got a reduction Friday in the sentence she received for lying to a grand jury investigating Wall Street fraud.

U.S. District Judge Leonard B. Sand reduced his original 18-month prison sentence to 10 months after an appeals court threw out the longer term on grounds that it was stiffer than mandated by federal sentencing guidelines.

Sand also fined Jones $25,000 and ordered her to pay $14,850 for the cost of her incarceration. In addition, he required her to receive mental health treatment during her term.

The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the original sentence violated guidelines that govern crimes occurring after January, 1987.

Jones, 27, was convicted in March, 1989, of seven counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying in January, 1988, to a federal grand jury investigating trading activities at Drexel.

Sand said he was sympathetic to Jones’ psychological problems and troubled childhood--she ran away from home at 14--but said deterrence was necessary because she lied repeatedly to investigators.

Jones’ behavior was “not a sudden impulse,” the judge said. “It was a persistent conduct of perjury on several occasions, despite warnings” from the government.

Jones, who worked at Drexel’s Beverly Hills junk- bond department, was the first person convicted in the government’s lengthy investigation of fraud on Wall Street.

She was an assistant to Drexel trader Bruce L. Newberg, who was convicted in the Princeton-Newport case and sentenced to three months in prison. She was not charged with violating securities laws.

Jones sobbed throughout the sentencing and afterward was hugged by three friends, including Newberg’s wife.

“Nothing takes away this agony for very long,” she said in a letter to the judge. “I live each day in the totality of my crisis. There are never-ending sleepless nights and days full of anxiety.

“I have been shattered and humiliated,” she wrote. “I don’t even know where to begin to try to rebuild my life.”

Jones is to surrender to federal authorities by July 23 to begin her sentence.

She must spend five months at a minimum-security prison camp in Phoenix before becoming eligible for transfer to a halfway house in Los Angeles or to home detention.