Former Mississippi corrections commissioner Christopher Epps was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison and fined $100,000, the AP reports.
U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate announced the decision Wednesday.
Epps, 56, pleaded guilty in 2015 to money laundering and filing false tax returns in connection with nearly $1.5 million in bribes he took from contractors doing business with Mississippi prisons.
Epps has been jailed the past several months for violating terms of his bond.
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Epps started taking bribes back in the ’90s at a time when Emmitt Sparkman was the Wackenhut warden at Marshall County. He made Sparkman deputy commissioner not long after Chris was made commissioner.
GEO, CCA/CoreCivic, MTC and Cornell were paying the bagman for Epps $8,000-$12,000 monthly, with Chris actually negotiating the hire with MTC at the higher amount to be paid to their “consultant” who turned around and split the take with Epps, after the income taxes were deducted.
Will they be prosecuted? GEO and CCA gave $250,000 each to Trump for his greatest, most wonderful and spectacular of all inaugurations in the history of the universe. Those “donations” followed six-figure campaign contributions from GEO. The Obama administration’s Deputy Attorney General, Sally Yates, had announced they would phase out the for-profit contracts, back in August. She lasted less than a week after the Russians won the election and Trump was sworn in.