Glamorous American Women Who Fell Foul of the Law.

Martha Stewart

Years before Paris Hilton became the scandalous socialite and delinquent that checked into prison, media magnate and house wares expert Martha Stewart had established herself as one of the most successful businesswomen in the world. In 2001, Ladies Home Journal named her the third most powerful woman in America and her personal fortune was estimated in the hundreds of millions.

But Stewart's fortunes took a tumble in early 2002, when the a US congressional committee announced it was probing her sale of Imclone stock - a sale that occurred exactly one day before the federal government announced that it would not be reviewing one of the pharmaceutical company's new drugs. Two years and a media circus later, Stewart was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and two counts of making false statements, and was sentenced to spend five months at a minimum security prison in Alderson, West Virginia, followed by house arrest and probation. Stewart reportedly got on very well with her fellow inmates and told Vanity Fair magazine that her prison nickname was "M Diddy".

Winona Ryder

For some, the twice Academy award-nominated actress's most memorable role was as the gloomy daughter in 1988's Beetlejuice. But for others, Ryder's most enduring performance came in 2001, when she was arrested for stealing $5,500 in designer clothing and accessories from a Beverly Hills department store. The district attorney prosecuted the actress aggressively, assembling a team of eight prosecutors and requiring that the trial be televised. In December 2002, Ryder was found guilty and sentenced to three years of probation, 480 hours of community service, $3,700 (£1,850) in fines and $6,355 in restitution payments to the store (all on top of some mandatory drug counseling ordered by the judge). Her career has never quite been the same since.

Courtney Love

No one could claim to be terribly surprised when, in August 2005, Courtney Love - rocker, rager and former spouse of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain - admitted to using drugs in violation of her probation. After all, this sort of thing had been going on for a while. In 2003, she was arrested for attempting to break into the house of her then-boyfriend and pleaded not guilty in a separate case to felony drug charges, calling the allegations "retarded". An arrest warrant was soon issued when she failed to appear for a hearing.

Love skirted the slammer for a few years, but the law caught up in 2005 when the California judge - who initially told Love that she needed "to go to the county jail" - ordered her into a mandatory 28-day drug treatment program. She skipped that too - but soon found herself sentenced to house arrest for drug rehab. Upon release in 2006, she thanked the court for "allowing me these 90 days", which, she said, "helped me deal with a very gnarly drug problem". Gnarly indeed.

Judith Miller

The former New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, might lack the colossal riches of a Martha Stewart or the drug-addled glamor of a Courtney Love, but that didn't keep her out of the big house. Miller, who stoked controversy for her kowtowing pre-war coverage of the Bush administration's Iraqi weapons claims, ended up with jail time when she refused to testify before a grand jury about the leak of Valerie Plame's name as a covert CIA agent.

Miller was held in contempt of court and served 85 days in prison, released after she agreed to named her source in the Plame affair as former chief of staff to Dick Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby (due to be sentenced tomorrow). She retired from the Times soon after.

Heidi Fleiss

According to her own statement, the LA socialite and party girl, Heidi Fleiss, ran the best little whorehouse in Hollywood for $1,500 a pop. She was convicted in connection with her prostitution ring on December 2 1994, of charges including pandering and tax evasion. Her ring had numerous famous and wealthy clients and she was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison for tax evasion, but served just 21.

Her ring had numerous famous and wealthy clients, and Fleiss, the daughter of a respected LA pediatrician, still claims to have in her possession a "little black book" of A-list Hollywood patrons. She is currently planning to build a legal brothel in Nevada, which will be an exact replica of the White House.

Leona Helmsley

Known as a tyrannical "boss from hell", the New York hotel operator and real estate investor who was convicted of federal income tax evasion and other crimes in 1989 and served 18 months in prison, after receiving an initial sentence of 16 years. Rudolph Giuliani, the future mayor of New York, was one of the two chief prosecutors in the trial.

In 2001, Forbes magazine described a feud between Ms. Helmsley and fellow billionaire Donald Trump: "No two billionaires loathe each other on a personal level more than The Donald and The Queen of Mean." But at least The Donald never did time.