‘Sabotage’ suspected after anonymous letter surfaces in Scott Walker real estate deal
A potential buyer who received a “weird” anonymous letter about an Ocean Springs shopping center backed out of the deal, leaving Scott Walker as the only potential buyer of the property where his mother is majority owner.
Sharon Walker and her son bought the small strip shopping center on Bienville Boulevard in 2017. She owns 85% and he has a 15% interest, court testimony has shown. But Scott Walker was paying the bills — and collecting the rent — from tenants in the shopping center before Chancery Court Judge Neil Harris began overseeing the assets of Bill and Sharon Walker.
A federal judge ordered the elder Walkers’ assets placed with a guardian after finding Scott Walker had been “misspending” his parents’ money. The U.S. District Court judge, Keith Starrett, presides over federal cases that saw both Bill and Scott Walker convicted of fraud for misspending federal funds while Bill Walker served as executive director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources.
Starrett ordered the guardianship so that Bill Walker’s spending can be reined in, allowing him to repay the restitution ordered for his crimes, a total of more than $572,000. Walker stopped making payments a year ago, but Harris has been working to get those payments back on track.
Bill and Sharon Walker are deeply in debt but have a substantial retirement income. Harris ordered the shopping center sold for the income it would bring.
The listing agent, Ricky Sutherland, found a buyer willing to pay $320,000 for the property. Scott Walker put in a backup offer of $280,000.
Sutherland and two other real estate agents, plus Scott Walker, wife Trinity and the potential buyer, Patrick Quave, were subpoenaed to court Friday to testify about the transaction and an anonymous letter that Quave received after he had agreed to buy the property.
Quave said he had already decided that he didn’t want to go through with the purchase when he received the letter. The printed letter said it was from “a realtor (sic) and family acquaintance of Scott Walker,” but it was unsigned. It went on to say that the Mississippi Department of Transportation actually owned most of the shopping center parking lot and a survey would be needed.
Harris called both Scott and Trinity Walker to the stand. They both denied ever having seen the letter or that they wrote it. But Scott Walker did say he had been informed, prior to Quave receiving the letter, about MDOT’s potential ownership of a portion of the shopping center parking lot.
Thomas Lyons, the real estate agent representing the buyer, said during his testimony, “It just feels like to me somebody was trying to sabotage the deal.” His brother Patrick Lyons, co-agent on the deal, said, “It was weird, for sure.”
None of the real estate agents thought that a Realtor had actually written the letter. “I don’t know why they would want to jeopardize another Realtor’s transaction,” Sutherland said.
Harris ordered the property surveyed to establish the property lines. As it stands, Scott Walker is now the only potential buyer for the shopping center.
Harris also said he has referred the anonymous letter to the district attorney’s office for investigation and spoken with an FBI representative about the possibility of a forensic analysis to determine the letter’s origins.
