The system led to several scandals, including one a decade ago in which a federal judge briefly jailed a sheriff nicknamed “Sheriff Corndog” for feeding inmates corndogs and little else.Īnother sheriff lost a reelection bid last year after reports linked food profits and a coastal condominium he and his wife purchased for $740,000.
During the four years the scheme operated, Abston got more than $400,000 in food allowance money from the state and other government agencies, prosecutors said. Sheriffs get state reimbursements to feed jail prisoners, and an old Alabama law let them keep any leftover funds. The final decision is up to a judge, and no hearing date was set immediately.
Abston then wrote checks totaling some $80,000 over four years to purchase cut-rate food that was meant for the poor and wrongly used it to feed prisoners.Ībston faces more than 20 years in prison, but the plea agreement showed that prosecutors will recommend a lighter sentence. The statement said Abston got his own church, Highland Baptist of Gordo, involved in the West Alabama Food Bank in 2014. “A sitting county sheriff is alleged to have defrauded a food bank and a church for his personal gain at the expense of the underprivileged that the food bank serves,” U.S. Pickens County Sheriff David Abston, who held office in the rural west Alabama county for more than three decades, agreed to plead guilty to fraud and filing a false tax return, court records show.Ībston, who resigned, also agreed to forfeit about $51,000, according to a plea deal.Īlthough a Depression-era law changed by lawmakers this year let sheriffs profit from jail kitchens, prosecutors said Abston’s setup was a scam. An Alabama sheriff was arrested Friday and agreed to plead guilty to federal charges of scamming a food bank and his own small-town church to pocket thousands under an old law that let state sheriffs profit from feeding prisoners.
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