Judge sentences Willie Demps in Superior Court clerk scandal that cost Columbus millions
Before he sentenced ex-Muscogee Superior Court Clerk supervisor Willie Demps to 12 years in federal prison for a financial scandal that likely cost Columbus about $7 million, a federal judge observed what many have noted since Demps’ schemes were uncovered last year.
“It’s hard to understand how this went undetected for so long,” U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land said Thursday, right after Demps apologized for the theft of public funds, and for recruiting friends and family to help.
Demps had just told Land he was “truly sorry” for diverting funds to his own use as far back as 2010. Though Demps worked for the clerk’s office from January 1989 to December 2019, federal investigators said they had no records to track any money missing before 2010.
“I was selfish. I used people. I took money that was entrusted to my care,” Demps, 64, told Land. “I deceived and disappointed a lot of people.... I honestly can’t figure out why I put myself in this situation.”
Referring to a sometimes rocky marriage, he said: “My wife once said to me that I will die old and alone.” With two twins age 9, he did not want to die alone in prison, he added.
Demps pleaded guilty Feb. 2 to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and two counts of tax evasion. Land sentenced him to 145 months in prison, plus five years of supervised release, and ordered him to pay $1,323,045 in restitution to the clerk’s office, and $359,604 to the IRS.
He was among six of the eight defendants to be sentenced Wednesday, and his was the last case to be called.
When the court hearing ended, the question of how Demps got away with his theft for so long was still hanging.
The evidence
Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Helmick told Land that Demps over 30 years had complete control over money coming into the clerk’s office and over the records that kept track of those funds, enabling him to falsify documents to cover his thefts, which no external audit had revealed.
“He had the perfect job for this fraud,” Helmick said.
Besides recruiting people to help him cash checks he wrote on clerk’s office accounts, before pocketing the proceeds for personal expenses and casino gambling, Demps kept an open safe in his office from which he took cash whenever he wanted, Helmick said.
“He took cash in an amount we will never fully know,” she said.
Investigators estimated the total loss at $7 million from 2010 to 2019, but the yearly amount taken swelled in 2019, when he wrote the fraudulent checks for his cohorts to cash.
“The cost to the city truly cannot be overstated,” Helmick said.
That check-cashing scheme continued for a year after Superior Court Clerk Danielle Forte requested an internal audit, when she won a special election in November 2018. That election followed the death of Clerk Ann Hardman, who was elected in 2016 and died in office. Before Hardman, Clerk Linda Pierce held the position for 28 years.
Forte addressed the court Thursday, telling Land she started work on Nov. 14, 2018, and requested the internal audit on Nov. 26. Columbus Council approved her request on Dec. 4, she said.
Documents the Ledger-Enquirer obtained through an open-records request in Demps’ case included a March 2020 letter that Forte wrote to Columbus Mayor Skip Henderson, recounting the events that occurred after her audit request.
She wrote that the audit did not begin until September 2019, and immediately raised suspicions regarding Demps, spurring what authorities called Demps’ “abrupt retirement” on Dec. 2, 2019, the day he was supposed to meet with an auditor.
Demps called in sick that day, then went to the Government Center that night to remove records, and sent an email saying he was retiring, effective immediately. Forte said she saw the email the next day, notified the auditors, and immediately shut off Demps’ access to the office, its bank accounts and its computer system.
After Thursday’s court hearing, Forte recalled what she was told in 2019 about the audit’s delay.
“I was told that I was in a lineup,” she said, adding that other, earlier audit requests came first. “There were at least two times that I picked up the phone and called and said, ‘What’s going on?’”
Auditors assured her that any financial crimes would be revealed once the audit was underway, she said. “That’s the reassurance I was given, that ‘Hey, we’re going to get to you, and if there’s any impropriety and we find anything, we’ll be able to lock in on it.’ They were trying to calm me down.”
The belief then was that “the type of financial crimes and financial practices are ... able to be revealed even if you don’t catch them right away. You follow the paper trail,” she said, later adding, “That was the reassurance from the auditing department.”
Forte said she could not act on her suspicions immediately, because Demps was a city merit-system employee, and she could take no disciplinary action against him without evidence of wrongdoing.
She said Thursday that she has found no records indicating any of her predecessors sought an internal audit. She told Land that she since has hired a certified public accountant, put five workers in the office’s financial division to track funds and instituted other safeguards.
“Hopefully these actions will ensure that nothing like this ever happens again,” she said.
The co-defendants
Federal agents finally arrested Demps in August, after a 71-count indictment accused him and seven co-defendants of stealing at least $467,000 from accounts that Demps managed in the year 2019.
But when he pleaded guilty in February, prosecutors offered a fresh assessment of the losses over the years:
They said Demps wrote 330 fraudulent checks totaling $1.3 million between Oct. 19, 2010 and Nov. 27, 2019, and deposited only $210 out of $5.5 million in cash paid to the clerk’s office over those years.
Demps managed funds for which he was authorized to write checks on Superior Court Clerk accounts at area banks. He recruited others to help him cash those checks, sometimes meeting them outside the bank branches, or outside the Columbus Government Center. He took blank checks, wrote them to his accomplices and signed them, before they took the checks to be cashed.
The accounts he oversaw held court funds derived from felony and misdemeanor fines, forfeitures and condemnations. The accounts were at Synovus Financial Corp., SunTrust Bank and Colony Bank.
The others Land sentenced Thursday in Demps’ scheme were:
- Rosalee Bassi, 66, of Phenix City, Demps’ mother-in-law. A native of French-speaking Cameroon, she spoke through an interpreter. “I would like to apologize for what I did,” she said. “I did not know what I was doing.” Federal agents said her role was “minimal,” as she pleaded guilty only to transporting stolen checks across state lines. Land sentenced her to five years of supervised release and ordered her to pay $61,896 in restitution.
- Lamarcus Palmer, 35, of Smiths Station, Alabama. Palmer did yard work for another co-defendant, Terry McBride, who Palmer said compelled him to cash one check for Demps to be paid for his yard work. He got $400 from that, but no proceeds from two other checks McBride had him cash. Land sentenced him to a year of supervised release and had him pay $12,606 in restitution.
- Terry McBride, 45, of Smiths Station. McBride cashed 70 checks for Demps, totaling almost $300,000. Land sentenced him to 24 months in prison plus five years of supervised release, and ordered him to pay $299,285 in restitution.
- George Cook, 33, of Columbus. Cook, Demps’ nephew, was credited with giving investigators “substantial assistance,” Helmick told Land: “When they interviewed him, he told the whole truth.” He cashed 60 checks for Demps, and got no money in return, he said. Land sentenced him to one day in prison, with credit for the day served upon his arrest, plus five years of supervised release. He’s to pay $215,196 in restitution.
- Samuel Cole, 73, of Columbus. Cole, a longtime friend of Demps, admitted that Demps paid him to marry Rosalee Bassi so she could stay in the United States, where Helmick said she so far remains a “lawful, permanent resident.” He apologized for cashing 98 checks that totaled nearly $400,000, between 2014 and 2019, and acknowledged he sometimes accompanied Demps on trips to casinos. Land sentenced him to 18 months in prison and ordered him to pay $378,020 in restitution.
Columbus couple Curtis Porch, 48, and Dereen Porch, 43, will be sentenced on June 14, Land said. Their case is being handled differently because they have other pending charges, attorneys said.
This story was originally published June 2, 2022 at 4:04 PM.