Kwame Kilpatrick leaves court on 9/21
Now this is really going to hurt Kwame Kilpatrick’s credit score when he eventually gets out of prison after serving his some 20-plus years. He’ll never get a loan for a yacht.
Kilpatrick already owed $854,063 in restitution to the city of Detroit from his sexting scandal. On top of that, on Tuesday at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Detroit, Judge Nancy Edmunds ordered Kilpatrick to pay $4,584,423 in restitution to the city’s water department for rigging contracts with his good buddy, contractor Bobby Ferguson. He was also ordered to pay the IRS nearly $200,000 in back taxes.
Tuesday’s hearing was a good exercise in government and justice. But the reality is, the city of Detroit won’t ever see that money. The city has a better shot of having Prince Charles buy a vacation home on a canal, off of Jefferson Avenue, than of collecting that money.
Kilpatrick was sentenced in October to 28 years in prison after being convicted of multiple counts of extortion, bribery and tax evasion. His buddy Ferguson got 21 years.
Both say they’re broke.
The feds have a sneaking suspicion they might be hiding some cash or assets. They’re still hoping to find something, be it buried cash or real estate.
But for now, the idea of collecting restitution from either seems rather futile.
How serious is Kilpatrick taking all this?
Well, he opted not to even show up to the hearing.
His attorney Harold Gurewitz argued on his behalf, questioning how the government arrived at the $4.5 million figure. But the judge sided with the government, calling the final tally a “very conservative estimate.” She noted that Ferguson sometimes got paid for city projects he did not work on.
The government estimates that Ferguson owes about $6.2 million in restitution for conspiring with Kilpatrick to rig city contracts. The way that will work is: If he were to pay it all, that would cover Kilpatrick’s $4.5 million. If Kilpatrick paid the $4.5 million, then Ferguson would only owe $1.7 million.
And if I was many many years younger, and had a better left hand hook, and could dunk the ball, I’d be starting for the Pistons. In other words, we can talk about all the varying combinations, but all it is a lot of “ifs.”
In the end, Ferguson and Kilpatrick are going to die owing the city of Detroit a lot of money. There’s no “ifs” about that. “
