Last defendant sentenced in Muscogee Superior Court clerk scandal costing $7 million

Mark Rice
Mike Haskey/mhaskey@ledger-enquirer.com

The last of the eight defendants involved in the Muscogee County Superior Court clerk scandal orchestrated by former supervisor Willie Demps has been sentenced in federal court.

Prosecutors have said Demps, who worked 30 years for the clerk’s office and managed court funds, likely stole as much as $7 million during his employment.

Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land sentenced Curtis Porch to 21 months to serve in prison and ordered full restitution: $133,000 to the SBA, and $152,585 to the Muscogee County Superior Court clerk’s office. Porch also must serve five years of supervised release and pay $200 in court fees.

Porch, 48, pleaded guilty in the two cases against him: Nov. 30 to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and Jan. 4 to one count of theft of government property.

Before pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud, Porch faced a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, a maximum fine of $1 million and a maximum of five years of supervised release. Before pleading guilty to theft of government property, he faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a maximum fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release.

According to court documents, the theft of government property involved a fraudulent application for a $133,000 loan from the Small Business Administration. Porch received the money in August 2020 and spent it on unauthorized items, including vacations and food.

The conspiracy to commit bank fraud involved Porch helping Demps on approximately 35 occasions between October 2016 and November 2019 cash checks drawn on accounts belonging to the Muscogee County Superior Court clerk’s office. The checks totaled $152,585.

Wife previously sentenced

Porch’s wife, Dereen Porch, 44, not only participated in Demps’ 2019 scheme to cash checks fraudulently written on clerk’s office accounts, but she also was charged in a scam to obtain unauthorized COVID-19 relief funds.

She pleaded guilty Nov. 30, 2021, to two counts of wire fraud for making false claims for economic impact disaster loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration for losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities said. In the court clerk scandal, she pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud.

Judge Land sentenced her June 14 to 21 months in prison plus five years of supervised release, and ordered her to pay $72,842 in restitution in the court clerk scandal and $230,300 in restitution to the Small Business Administration in the COVID relief case.

Request for leniency

During the hearing Wednesday, defense attorney William Kendrick asked Land for leniency when determining where in the range of 15-21 months imprisonment to sentence Curtis Porch. Kendrick mentioned the following facts to support his argument:

  • His wife can’t work because of medical reason, and she already was sentenced to serve 21 months in prison.

  • Porch is the family’s only wage earner while supporting two children in college.

  • He had been earning an annual salary of $38,443 at Columbus machining company Aludyne, but he recently received a raise that essentially doubled his salary and better enables him to pay the restitution.

  • Porch has a consistent history of working for more than a decade at the company.

  • Each month, $594 already is being drawn from his paycheck for the SBA restitution.

In his statement, Porch told the judge he is trying to live an honorable life. “I apologize to the whole court,” he said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Helmick advocated for a sentence at the high end of the range, noting Porch was involved in two fraud schemes.

Land denied Kendrick’s request for a variance as he issued Porch’s sentence.

Other cases in the scandal

Having pleaded guilty Feb. 2 to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and two counts of tax evasion, Demps, 64, was sentenced on June 2 to 145 months in prison, plus five years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $1,323,045 in restitution to the clerk’s office and $359,604 to the IRS.

Authorities 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.

He managed funds for which he was authorized to write checks on Superior Court Clerk accounts at area banks, and recruited others to help him cash those checks. 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.

He was among six defendants sentenced June 2. Here are the others:

Staff writer Tim Chitwood contributed to this report.

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