Former Augusta commissioner Sammie Sias was sentenced to three years in federal prison for destroying records and lying to an FBI agent.
Last July, a jury convicted Sias, 68, of destruction of records and making a false statement to an agency of the U.S. government. In addition to three years in prison, U.S. District Judge J. Randal Hall ordered Sias to pay a $5,000 fine and serve three years of supervised release after his prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.
“The community trusted Sammie Sias to be an upstanding public official, and saw him as someone their community could count on for leadership,” said Jill Steinberg, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia. “This sentence not only will serve to deter Mr. Sias from committing any similar conduct in the future but it will also serve to deter others in similar positions from betraying the community’s trust.”
Sias requested Federal Correctional Institution Estill, about 75 miles southeast of Augusta. Free on bond since the trial as he filed appeals, Sias has to voluntarily surrender to prison by 2 p.m. Aug. 23.
Defense attorney Jesse Owen said Sias was the most decorated soldier he’d ever represented. Owen urged Hall to place Sias on supervised release only, to avoid interrupting his military retirement and social security, which amount to $70,000 annually, Owen said.
Attending Sias’ sentencing Tuesday was his former mistress, Willa Hilton, who worked with Sias at Jamestown Community Center. Hilton, whom Sias had appointed to the Augusta Aviation Commission, triggered the investigation when she claimed to authorities Sias treated the center as his personal clubhouse and spent public funds as his own.
Agents looking into the misuse of sales tax funds served the Sandridge Community Association and Sias with subpoenas in 2019 for financial records. Within hours of the agent’s visit, Sias deleted approximately 7,000 files from a center laptop with filenames such as Jamestown and “SPLOST,” for the 1 percent sales tax dollars. Asked to confirm by lead agent Charles McKee he’d turned over all the requested files, Sias said in a recorded interview that he had.
Sias, who founded the neighborhood association in the 1990s, spoke to the court prior to Hall sentencing him. He claimed a combined 62 years of public service, including 28 years in the Army and 34 years serving the community.
As a soldier, his attitude was “get it done” and that “failure is not an option,” Sias said. He bragged of serving as “spokesperson” for the stormwater utility fee, the water bill add-on that raises some $14 million annually. He took credit for the commission vote to expend $12 million for a parking deck to serve the Georgia Cyber Center. Today, several of the FBI and Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents who investigated him have offices there.
The case was prosecuted for the United States by Assistant U.S. Attorney and Criminal Division Chief Patricia G. Rhodes, and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara M. Lyons.
Sias “spent 28 years in the service of our country and following the rules,” then “he began to abuse the authority he had been given,” Lyons said. “Mr. Sias just decided that he did not have to play by the rules.”
Hall said in determining Sias’ sentence, he took his military and community service into account, but what set his obstruction of justice apart was it it being the actions of an elected official. “This is far more serious than your garden-variety lying to a federal agent,” Hall said. “The actual truth about what happened with the funds will never be known.”
