Federal prosecutors began weaving the threads to persuade jurors that a suspended Augusta commissioner tried to cover up his misuse of taxpayer dollars and lied to federal investigators when he said he had given them everything they needed to determine how $150,000 was alleged spent at a community center.
But Sammie Sias’ defense team also worked in the Augusta’s federal courthouse Wednesday, July 27, to fray the pattern prosecutors sought to present. Sias has pleaded not guilty to charges of destroying evidence material to a federal investigation and lying to investigators.
Sias’ trial began Tuesday.
Sias represented District 4 on the city commission until the governor suspended him after his July 2021 indictment. Sias was into his second term as commissioner, and he was president of the Sandridge Community Association when allegations arose in 2019 that he appropriated taxpayer money for himself that was promised for improvements of the Jamestown Community Center. The Sandridge Community Association had an agreement with the city to run Jamestown.
On March 18, 2014, Sias signed an agreement with the city of Augusta that $150,000 in Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax funds would be used for improvements at Jamestown. He signed the document on behalf of the Sandridge Community Association.
But two members of the Sandridge Community Association who served as treasurer in the years after 2014 testified Wednesday they never saw any receipts, bank statements, invoices or any financial information connected to those SPLOST funds.
Jacqueline Fason testified that Sias asked her to step in as president of the Sandridge Community Association in 2019 when the allegations against him surfaced. When she was served with a subpoena for those financial documents on July 30, 2019, she called Sias, “because I didn’t have those documents … I didn’t know where they were.”
Sias, whom she considered a good record keeper, told her that the documents were in the file cabinets at Jamestown and that federal agents could get the other documents from the banks, Fason said. When she opened the final cabinet after retrieving the key from Sias, the filing cabinet was empty, she said.
Several improvements were made at Jamestown, Fason testified. She identified several in photographs shown to the jury Wednesday, such as the extended entrance to the building, a new roof, structural changes inside that provided space for a gaming room and computer lab, and professional grade kitchen appliances.
Unlike Fason, when she was the association’s treasurer Olivia Scott did see some bank statements, and she was authorized to write checks on the association’s account. But she left the unpaid treasurer position because she was uncomfortable. She wasn’t getting the information needed for all transactions, she testified.
Federal prosecutors intend to prove that Sias kept all the financial information about the $150,000 SPLOST funds in a laptop computer that he controlled. A computer forensic expert with the FBI told the jury that hundreds of files and folders containing documents with descriptions as “SPLOST,” “invoice,” “Jamestown” and “Sandridge Community Association” were deleted from that computer between the time an FBI agent served Sias with a subpoena for all of the records and the day he turned over the computer and other electronic devices two days later in August 2019.
On cross-examination, however, the computer forensic expert agreed with the defense that most if not all of the documents could have been recovered from the computer software backup program.
Sandy Hodson is a staff reporter covering courts for The Augusta Press. Reach her at sandy@theaugustapress.com.Â
