Bill Walker must pay or go to jail. Scott Walker’s spending ‘out of line,’ judge says
Former Department of Marine Resources director Bill Walker will spend 30 days in jail unless he pays $16,500 in restitution by Jan. 1, Judge Keith Starrett ruled Tuesday in federal court, adding that the state should investigate Walker’s son, Scott, for exploiting vulnerable adults, namely his parents.
Starrett said, after examining the financial records of Bill Walker and his wife, that Scott Walker has spent thousands of dollars of his parents’ money and set up his family for a nice payday when his parents die.
Both Bill and Scott Walker were convicted in 2014 of defrauding the government and served prison time. Both were ordered to pay restitution. Bill Walker was already hauled back to court two years ago for failing to make his monthly payments of $5,000. Starrett sent him to jail for 11 days, then released Walker after he promised to cut his expenses and pay.
Both Bill and Scott Walker stopped making their monthly payments in February, but only Bill Walker is still under the court’s supervision.
“You steal half a million from the taxpayers, I’m not really sad to see you suffer a little pain and the pain is reasonable lifestyle adjustments,” Starrett told Walker. “Come on, people.”
Where did the money go?
Starrett tried to determine over the course of a two-day hearing why Bill Walker is unable to make his restitution payments. The first day of the hearing was Sept. 29, when Starrett ordered Scott Walker to produce detailed records of his parents’ finances.
Bill Walker, 75, has memory problems and his wife, Sharon, also is in bad health. Their only son has been managing their money.
“The finances of the Walker family, Sharon and Bill, have been commingled since 2014,” Starrett said. “I think they have been commingled for two purposes.” The Walkers were trying to obscure any paper trail, and Scott Walker intended to obscure that trail even more, the judge concluded, so the government wouldn’t get its restitution.
“It just incenses me that, with the resources these people have, they are whining and crying for the government to do something, but they won’t do something for themselves.”
Bill and Sharon Walker have a monthly retirement income of about $17,000. On top of that, they receive two extra retirement checks from state government each December that total around $45,000.
Bill Walker’s conviction came after he was forced to resign as director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources over financial improprieties.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Meynardie laid out in court Friday for Starrett some of the expenses Bill and Sharon Walker paid for Scott, his wife and their three sons.
▪ $4,000 for a trip Scott and wife Trinity took to Croatia for a friend’s wedding, a Christmas gift, Scott Walker said on the stand.
▪ $3,700 for a Labrador puppy that Bill and Sharon Walker bought for their grandsons. (Sharon Walker fell because of the puppy last week, spent three days in the hospital and still had two black eyes when she was in court.)
▪ $1,300 a month for a BMW that Scott Walker drives.
▪ $2,000 for a golf cart that both Bill and Scott Walker use to ride around Ocean Springs.
▪ $40,000 for a down payment on a shopping center from which Scott Walker’s company derives most of the rental income.
▪ Expenses Bill or Sharon Walker covered for their son’s family also included weekly Sunday lunches after church at Anthony’s Steak & Seafood, tickets to Ole Miss games, summer camp for the boys, day care, power bills, concerts, casino shows and the list went on.
Scott Walker said he and parents help each other
Scott Walker, who was on the witness stand for both days of the hearing, said Tuesday that he helps out his parents and they help him, too. He said that he has spent $118,000 of his money on them. And he finished paying his own restitution in two criminal cases with proceeds from the recent sale of his family’s two-story home.
His final payment was $100,953, part of it owed along with his father in a federal fraud case involving DMR funds, and a separate sum owed for defrauding the city of D’Iberville with another co-defendant, former city manager Michael Janus.
Bill Walker still separately owes $319,624 in restitution and a $125,000 fine to be paid after the government is repaid. He hasn’t made a payment since February.
“Do you understand your Dad is staring federal prison in the eyes?” Starrett asked Scott Walker at one point. “ . . . He pays your (car) insurance like you’re a child.”
Scott Walker said, “I help them a lot and they do, too. They help me a lot.”
Starrett then asked Scott Walker: “Who’s writing the checks for these large, extravagant expenditures? Where are your priorities, Mr. Walker?”
“There are expenses on here that are just absolutely totally out of line for anybody that’s not extravagantly rich.”
The attorney for Bill Walker, Steven Eckert of Biloxi, asked Starrett not to hold his client accountable for the spending because of his memory problems.
“There’s clearly a great deal of commingling going on — not so much my client’s doing but Scott’s doing,” Eckert said.
Starrett ordered in September that a legal guardian be appointed to take over Bill Walker’s finances. The guardian, attorney Matthew Pavlov, will be getting a conservatorship set up in Jackson County Chancery Court.
“I don’t think he (Bill Walker) intended to do any of this,” Pavlov told the judge. “I think there’s funds there to get this back on track.”
Walkers lose access to funds, credit cards
Starrett said the Walkers had done nothing to curb expenses as they said that they would two years ago. Until the conservatorship is set up and Pavlov is in charge of Bill and Sharon Walker’s finances, Starrett essentially froze their assets.
He also said the Jackson County district attorney should investigate whether Scott Walker has violated state criminal law that prohibits exploitation of vulnerable adults.
Bill and Sharon Walker’s monthly retirement checks must be paid going forward into an account with the Jackson County court and held there until a conservatorship is established for them, Starrett said. Income Sharon Walker should be getting from the shopping center she owns with her son will be paid to the court, too.
He also ordered the Walkers’ credit card accounts closed. The accounts are maxed out, with only monthly minimum payments being made.
Bill Walker’s 30-day jail sentence, followed by 33 more months on supervised release, will be stayed if he pays $6,500 on Dec. 1, which includes his monthly restitution and arrears, and $10,000 by Jan. 1. The later amount would be available from the bonus retirement check he receives in December.
Eckert asked what the Walkers will do in the meantime to buy groceries and pay for other essentials.
Starrett said he was not going to worry about those details.
“They will have to make do,” he said. “They can eat at Scott’s house.”
This story was originally published October 20, 2020 at 5:48 PM.
