A former Atlanta FBI agent pleaded guilty in federal court to sharing confidential law enforcement information with a woman with whom he had a personal relationship and allowing her and her husband to participate in undercover child sex sting operations.
The misdemeanor charge was brought against Ken Hillman just weeks before the five-year statute of limitations would have expired. Hillman, who headed the now-disbanded joint local-federal Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in northwest Georgia, entered his plea in federal court in Rome on Thursday. Now retired, he could be sentenced to up to a year and fined as much as $100,000 when he appears before a judge again in September.
The sordid case broke open after Ringgold attorney McCracken Poston reported Hillman's behavior with Angela Russell to the FBI in early 2013.Hillman was engaged in a sexual relationship with Russell and sometimes allowed her to help lure would-be sexual predators online although she was not in law enforcement, court documents show.
Poston represents Michael Hardy, one of the men charged as part of Hillman’s operations. According to Poston, Hillman may have lied in his testimony before a Catoosa County grand jury when he took credit for things Russell may have done that led to criminal charges against Hardy. Poston said Hardy told him Russell was one of the “agents” who interviewed him. Jail logs also identified her as an agent when Hillman once signed them in to interview Hardy. The 2012 case against Hardy, an ex-Marine, is still pending before a Cobb County senior judge.
Poston told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday that Hillman should have faced more serious federal charges but he got “a sweet deal.”
“They had to take care of their own,” Poston said. “People charged with what my client is charged with do not have a strong constituency… and that probably effects things as well.”
Credit: T. LEVETTE BAGWELL
Credit: T. LEVETTE BAGWELL
Federal prosecutors in South Carolina took over the case when the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Georgia recused itself.
The court documents do not name the Russells, and the statement by the U.S. attorney in South Carolina uses only their initials — A.R. and E.R. But The AJC has already reported the allegations in a 2013 account of the supposed indiscretions of the married FBI agent. Some feared his conduct would jeopardize criminal cases against suspected sexual predators of children and the the task force was disbanded.
Public defender David Dunn, who represented at least three of those defendants, said Friday all his cases had been closed with guilty pleas. He said Hillman’s plea in federal court won’t change anything for his clients because the charges against them did not involve falsifying information. Disclosing confidential information “wouldn’t go to the essential truth or lack of truth of the charges so I don’t see how that would directly affect anyone’s conviction.”
Poston, however, thinks it will matter in his case.
According to a statement from South Carolina prosecutors, in 2012 Hillman “disclosed sensitive, but unclassified, information” about the task force’s operation when he let the Russells watch internet chats during which agents, posing as underage girls, negotiated sexual encounters with suspects.
Hillman also let Angela Russell review the “specialized internet chat language” and then conduct several chats on behalf of the task force, the statement said. Some men were arrested after they drove to the Ringgold area to meet underage sex partners because of chats they had with Angela Russell when she was pretending to be a girl.
Though the FBI opened an internal investigation into Hillman soon after the reports surfaced, it is not clear if the internal review was complete or if the bureau took any administrative steps before Hillman retired.
Emerson Russell told the AJC in 2013 that soon after he met Hillman, he told the agent his task force could use a furnished guest house a few yards from his front door. Hillman once brought the Russells to a meeting with a suspect at a Catoosa County RaceTrac gas station, Emerson Russell said. Hillman gave them guns, FBI windbreakers and bulletproof vests and allowed them to handcuff suspects and observe the subsequent interrogation, according to court records, other documents and Emerson Russell
The task force was created to focus on men and women called “travelers, ” who use the internet to find children for sex. Even though the FBI led the effort, most of the cases were prosecuted in local courts. Three cases that Hillman brought are still pending, including the one against Poston’s client.
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