Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: May 22, 2008
Contact : Sue McKinney
BANKRUPTCY FRAUD SENTENCING
Maxwell Wood, United States Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, announced today that KATHY ELY AVANT was sentenced on May 22, 2008, to a term of 5 months in federal prison by the Honorable W. Louis Sands, Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. Avant, age 38, of Fitzgerald, Georgia, pled guilty on March 7, 2008, to two counts of bankruptcy fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 152. Avant was also sentenced to serve two years on supervised release and five months of home confinement.
Avant had entered into a plea agreement in which she admitted that in October 2005, she filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition approximately three weeks after transferring to her mother title to a three bedroom house in Fitzgerald. The house, which had been purchased for Avant by her grandmother in 1999 for approximately $72,000, was at the time of the bankruptcy petition being rented to a tenant for $500 per month. However, in her bankruptcy documents which Avant declared to be true and correct under penalty of perjury, Avant failed to disclose the transfer of the property as well as the income she had been receiving from it. Avant later committed perjury at a creditors’ meeting when she denied, under oath, that she had made any transfers of property in the year before filing bankruptcy.
Avant’s fraud was discovered by the bankruptcy trustee, Walter W. Kelley, who reported the crime to the United States Attorney’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant United States Attorney K. Alan Dasher prosecuted the case.
Inquiries regarding the case should be directed to Ms. Sue McKinney, Public Affairs Specialist, United States Attorney’s Office at (478) 621-2602.
