THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, August 19, 1995              TAG: 9508190095
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST 
DATELINE: NEW YORK                           LENGTH: Short :   48 lines

FATHER $580,000 BEHIND IN CHILD PAYMENTS JAILED ``I THINK JUSTICE HAS BEEN SERVED,'' HIS WIFE SAYS AFTER THE NEW YORK RULING.

A prominent Wall Street investment adviser who owes almost $600,000 in child support was packed off to jail Friday by a judge who told him he will remain there until he starts paying back the money he owes his children.

Jeffrey Nichols, 47, who sat somberly in the witness box throughout the hearing, told New York state civil court Judge Phyllis Gangel-Jacob he was broke, owning only the $5,000 watch on his wrist and the furniture in his second wife's house, and begged to be released so that he could get back to his job and earn more money.

But Gangel-Jacob refused to believe him, calling Nichols a ``sophisticated businessman'' with the financial connections to raise large amounts of money. After the hearing, Nichols - who until this month lived in a $500,000, seven-acre home in rural Vermont with seven pure-bred dogs, a horse and swimming pool - was immediately taken to the Bronx House of Detention.

``I think justice has been served,'' Nichols' ex-wife, Marilyn Nichols Kane, told reporters on the steps of the courthouse. The decision, she said, would ``get the word out to parents who are making a choice to not make any payments to their children - those who have no regard for the lives and well-being of their children - this will not be tolerated.''

Nichols' imprisonment was a dramatic finale to a seemingly endless legal battle in which he moved three times, threw up a variety of legal barricades and hid money in an offshore bank account in the British West Indies with the result that since 1990 he has not paid a dime in child support.

On Aug. 8, using a new federal law targeting the most egregious deadbeat fathers, FBI agents arrested Nichols at his Vermont home. Monday in a Manhattan federal court, Nichols was arraigned on charges of failing to pay $580,000 in child support, an amount legal experts said might make him the country's leading deadbeat dad.

Nichols was released on $500,000 bail. But as he left that courthouse, he was arrested by New York city sheriffs on state contempt-of-court charges dating from 1990 when he first fled Manhattan owing $68,000.

KEYWORDS: CHILD SUPPORT by CNB