Biden commutes sentence of former DETCOG director
Posted/updated on: December 18, 2024 at 4:17 pm
TYLER – President Joe Biden has commuted the 9-year federal prison sentence of a former Deep East Texas Council of Governments executive director after he was found guilty of wire fraud back in 2017.
According to our news partner KETK, the White House released on Thursday, Walter Diggles, 72 of Jasper, was one of nearly 1500 people who were put on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those 1499 people are already back home with their families but the Biden administration has decided to commute their sentences meaning they’ll officially be out of custody much sooner. Diggles was convicted of 11 counts of wire fraud, three counts of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds and three counts of money laundering on Aug. 3 of 2017, according to a 2018 press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas.
Information presented in court reportedly showed that Diggles, along with his wife and daughter, conspired to personally use money from federal block grants that Congress appropriated to help Texas recover from Hurricanes Rita, Katrina, Ike and Dolly, the press release said.
The US Attorney’s Office described that Diggles, as Executive Director of DETCOG, approved inflated billing rates and reimbursement requests from those block grants before using those excess funds on personal expenses. KETK reported on Diggles when he retired after he was first charged back in 2016.
“The defendants stole from the taxpayers, and these kinds of frauds take money away from real people – disaster victims,” said Joseph Brown, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas in 2018. “This was an appropriate sentence, and hopefully it will help deter some of this type of behavior the next time.”
According to the US Attorney’s Office, Diggles was sentenced to 9 years in federal prison on May 22, 2018. He was also ordered to pay $1,326,049.91 in restitution to the government.
“Offenders who abuse the public trust inherently are more culpable. The defendants made a conscious decision to deceive and benefit personally at the expense of the citizens of the State of Texas,” said Tamera Cantu, IRS special agent in charge of the Dallas Field Office in 2018. “Today’s sentences underscore our commitment to work in a collaborative effort to promote honest and ethical government at all levels and to prosecute those who violate the public’s trust.”
Diggles’ wife and daughter were sentenced to 4.5 years in federal prison and were released on Jan. 18, 2022. The Federal Bureau of Prisons lists that Walter Diggles will be officially released on April, 12 of 2025.
