Digging deep
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has been poring over government officials’ discretionary spending since December. After a March article raised questions about purchases by then-DeKalb Commissioner Elaine Boyer, the FBI began an investigation into spending by the entire commission. As the AJC continued its examination, Boyer resigned Aug. 25 and pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges Sept. 3. DeKalb County is now auditing 10 years of spending records, and the Board of Ethics has open cases on four of the five remaining commisson members.
Coming clean may have been the shrewdest move Elaine Boyer could make, as federal investigators closed in and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution pressed for answers about her spending.
Flipping on others who broke the public trust could be even shrewder.
Instead of spending years in a federal penitentiary for bilking taxpayers out of more than $90,000, the longtime DeKalb County commissioner might only be locked up for months.
That’s if she gives the government “substantial assistance” — perhaps turning on co-conspirators or helping to root out other corrupt county officials. She could be a free woman again by next Christmas, said legal experts who examined her plea deal for the AJC.
The deal she struck with prosecutors became public Thursday through a court filing, the day after she pleaded guilty. It shows that for her resignation, cooperation and contrition, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will recommend she be sentenced to “the low end of the adjusted guideline range” on mail fraud conspiracy and wire fraud charges.
That’s 18 to 24 months — not the 40 years maximum sentence the combined charges carry.
For this, she had only to do what she wouldn’t do as the AJC spent months looking into her county Visa card purchases and questionable payments to a shadowy evangelist: Sit down, answer questions and tell the truth.
Prosecutors are willing to go even lower in their sentencing recommendation, a “downward departure,” if she becomes a valuable witness. Or, after sentencing, they could ask that she be allowed out of prison early, through what’s known as a “Rule 35” motion.
That may not go down easy for some of her victims — her own constituents.
“I know people are hot,” said Pam Saint, who lives not far from Boyer’s former home in the Smoke Rise community, near Stone Mountain. “If she’s going to cooperate, I say at least a minimum of five years. You know she’s going to end up at ‘club fed.’”
But considering the recent case of ex-Gwinnett County Commissioner Kevin Kenerly, who avoided prison by pleading no contest to charges of accepting $1 million in bribes, some would accept any amount of incarceration for Boyer.
“If an elected official is going to jail, it sends a strong message,” said William Perry, executive director of the watchdog group Common Cause Georgia. “Essentially, her political career is over. She can do no further harm to voters.”
Tom Hill, a Republican who lives in Brookhaven and voted for Boyer, said she should serve at least a year. “She almost has to, for some people to understand that it’s serious business when you start doing this kind of thing,” Hill said. “It’s called stealing.”
Prosecutors aren’t talking, so it’s unclear what potential criminal cases Boyer could assist them with. U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates told reporters last week that other commissioners, whom she did not name, are being investigated for how they spent their office funds.
“Who knows who she’s been talking to about what,” said former federal prosecutor Zahra Karinshak, now a white-collar criminal defense attorney for Krevolin & Horst, “and it might lead (investigators) down some fruitful paths.”
Yates also said she has not decided what to do about Boyer’s “adviser,” the unnamed phony consultant she used in a two-year kickback scheme.
The AJC found Boyer paid evangelist Rooks Boynton installments ranging from $1,500 to $5,000 from late 2009 to late 2011, claiming he gave her advice and did research on transportation, legislative issues and Grady hospital.
The newspaper found no evidence that Boynton, a onetime candidate for DeKalb CEO, ever performed any work. The federal charges, which do not name Boynton, say the “adviser” kicked about $58,000 to Boyer and kept about $20,000 for himself.
Boyer is to be sentenced Dec. 3. U.S. District Judge Orinda Evans does not have to abide by the deal, as she pointedly reminded Boyer while accepting her guilty plea Wednesday.
That means there’s a chance Boyer won’t have to put on prison duds at all. Or she could have to wear them for years.
B.J. Pak, a former federal prosecutor who now works as a white-collar criminal defense attorney for Ballard Spahr, described Evans as “firm but fair.”
“But she understands the gravity of a public official violating a trust like this,” Pak said. “I’m willing to bet she’s going to do imprisonment.”
Allen Moye, a retired former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said he can envision Boyer getting as little as five months in prison and five months in home confinement, depending on how much help she provides and how well her attorney argues for her freedom.
In the federal system, which has no parole, Boyer would be required to serve 85 percent of her sentence. So if Boyer gets a year in prison, that would amount to about 10 months.
The government will also seek restitution of about $90,000, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Davis said Wednesday. Boyer has already paid nearly $17,000 — her sum in Visa card purchases.
DeKalb County’s pension board, meanwhile, is looking into whether it can revoke or reduce Boyer’s pension, given her federal criminal conviction. If not, taxpayers could be on the hook to pay Boyer as much as $25,000 per year for the rest of her life.
The AJC in March first exposed how Boyer used her county purchasing card for family airline tickets, rental cars, a ski resort booking and personal cell phone charges, triggering the federal investigation.
Boyer, who represented north DeKalb as the panel’s sole Republican, was having personal financial problems at the time, struggling to hang on to the house she and her husband eventually lost to foreclosure. As a commissioner, she was meanwhile pushing back against efforts to beef up the county’s watchdog, the nonfunctional Board of Ethics.
About the Author
