JACKSON, Miss. (Legal Newsline) — Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood announced Nov. 29 that Sentinel Offender Services LLC, an inmate electronic monitoring services firm, will pay $1.3 million to resolve allegations of prison bribery.
According to allegations, a group of 10 individuals and 12 out-of-state corporations used fake “consultants” as conduits to bribe the former commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC), Chris Epps, into awarding them MDOC contracts. Through this process, the defendants purportedly defrauded Mississippi and engaged in a variety of illegal acts, including misrepresentation, fraud, concealment, and money laundering.
Hood filed 11 civil actions against the defendants. He has previously settled two of the actions and this is the third. In total Hood has recovered $5.8 million on the behalf of Mississippi taxpayers.
“As a company that continues to contract with the state, Sentinel Offender Services agreed to cooperate and settle the case for $1.3 million on a $2 million contract,” Hood said. “We successfully disgorged them of their ill-gotten profit and then some.”