‘You can’t live large,’ a judge warned Bill Walker. New details show he didn’t listen.

Bill Walker of Ocean Springs, the former Mississippi Department of Marine Resources director who defrauded the government, started collecting a substantial retirement check from the state before he and his son, Scott Walker, went to prison in 2014.

As part of his sentence, Walker was ordered to pay $572,689.14 in restitution and a $125,000 fine. U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett in February refused Walker’s request to reduce restitution payments of $5,000 per month.

The judge noted Walker didn’t pay a dime toward restitution while in prison, had an annual income with his wife of more than $190,000, and had done little if anything to curb expenses.

Starrett sent Walker to jail Wednesday for continued failure to make the payments or document his expenses.

The Sun Herald covered Wednesday’s hearing, but no media was at the February hearing. A recently released transcript from February’s hearing reveals new details about Walker and his finances:

▪ Bill Walker sold a second home in the Florida Keys in 2013 and cashed in life insurance to help pay for his criminal defense.

▪ Sharon Walker maxed out two credit cards while Bill Walker was in prison and was making minimum payments totaling $750 a month.

▪ Bill Walker’s accountant, Robert Culumber, acknowledged that he was taking the word of convicted felon Scott Walker to testify about Bill Walker’s expenses because there was no documentation to back them up.

▪ With expenses as high as they were, Culumber testified, it would be “mathematically impossible” for Walker to make full monthly restitution payments.

▪ Bill Walker claimed his memory is failing and his finances are managed by his son.

▪ He was still making monthly payments of around $863 on an IRS debt from 2010.

▪ He was paying $1,277 a month on Ocean Springs property that had belonged to his son and was fraudulently sold to the Land Trust of the Mississippi Coast Plain while he headed DMR. He still owed a total of $81,000 on the land.

▪ Scott Walker testified “ . . . despite my past, these numbers are very true and very correct.”

▪ Scott Walker told the Sun Herald after Wednesday’s hearing that he had not been asked for backup documentation on his father’s expenses until July, but he told Starrett in February: “I will provide (Probation Officer Justin) Crowe, or whoever you tell me to, judge, with the documents backing these numbers up. And $5,000 a month would financially ruin my mother and father.”

▪ At the end of the hearing, Starrett told Bill Walker: “When you have a substantial restitution, when you owe the public money, you can’t live large. There has been no reduction in the lifestyle of Dr. and Ms. Walker that I can tell.”

▪ The judge suggested they reduce monthly payments of $1,900 for automobiles and $1,500 for life insurance policies benefiting their son and grandsons. The Walkers still had the auto payments and life insurance payments when they showed up for court Wednesday.

This story was originally published September 21, 2018 at 7:00 AM.