Detroit — Federal court officials are trying to seize tax refunds and unclaimed property belonging to former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to satisfy restitution the corrupt politician owes taxpayers, a collection attempt emerging amid news he has leased a $90,000 luxury SUV and his wife’s consulting firm bought an $807,000 home in Novi.
U.S. District Court Clerk Drunetta Jennings filed a writ of continuing garnishment Monday to enforce a criminal restitution judgment imposed against Kilpatrick when he was convicted of racketeering conspiracy and 23 other charges in 2013. He was convicted after being accused of running a criminal enterprise out of Detroit City Hall, rigging bids and pocketing more than $840,000 in bribes and kickbacks.
Kilpatrick was ordered to pay more than $1.7 million to taxpayers and still owes $164,434, according to the court filing. He left federal prison in January 2021 after serving about eight years of a 28-year sentence that was commuted by then-President Donald Trump.
The writ — filed on the 11th anniversary of Kilpatrick’s federal conviction — requires Treasury officials to withhold and retain all property in which Kilpatrick has a “substantial nonexempt interest,” including retirement or investment accounts. Treasury officials must respond within 10 days whether there is any property owned by Kilpatrick.
The odds of federal officials collecting are “not high,” Birmingham criminal defense lawyer Wade Fink told The Detroit News.
“This kind of highlights the limitations there are on collecting bad debt,” Fink said Thursday. “There just are not a lot of tools short of garnishing things like wages, government benefits bank accounts you know to exist or tax refunds. You can’t just take people’s consumer goods. You can’t force a sale of their house.
“At the same time, it’s not illegal for his wife to own assets,” Fink added.
Kilpatrick’s lawyer, Brandon Byrd, did not respond immediately to a message seeking comment Thursday.
The writ was filed two months after public records emerged revealing Kilpatrick’s gilded lifestyle since leaving prison. The records raise questions about the ability of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit and court officials to collect money from a man whom prosecutors have labeled an unrepentant felon with a taste for luxuries and a long record of trying to thwart debt collection efforts.
State records obtained by The Detroit News show Kilpatrick, 53, leased a 2023 Infiniti QX80 sport utility vehicle one year ago that was worth $89,819. His mother, Democratic former U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Detroit, co-signed on the deal and records show there was a $2,000 down payment to Suburban Infiniti of Troy.
That amount is 10 times the average monthly payment Kilpatrick sent to federal prosecutors last year for the restitution debt.
Kilpatrick, who has a history of lying under oath, can be compelled to answer questions under oath about his finances, assets and specific transactions. Lying under oath could lead to a new criminal charge, Fink said.
Kilpatrick has a new job. In November, he was named the executive director of Taking Action for Good, a Tennessee nonprofit focusing on criminal justice reforms. His salary was not disclosed, but the nonprofit’s former executive director was paid $123,550 in 2001, according to federal tax records.
Also since being released, Kilpatrick launched Movemental Ministries, an online congregation where he serves as CEO.
Kilpatrick was serving three years of supervised release until January. During that supervision, Kilpatrick and his wife, LaTicia Kilpatrick, tried to raise money through a crowdsourcing website to buy an $800,000 home in a gated community in Orlando, Fla., “for his new role as a ‘pastor,'” then-Assistant U.S. Attorney David Gardey wrote in a court filing.
The crowdsourcing campaign was canceled after news outlets wrote about the effort. Kilpatrick met LaTicia Kilpatrick when she worked as a receptionist in the mayor’s office, and the couple wed in 2021.
“Thus, instead of living modestly, with the goal of paying off his obligations, Kilpatrick appears ready and willing to resume his jet-setting lifestyle, with no intention of paying his debt owed to the tax payers stemming from his own tax evasion,” Gardey wrote in a January 2023 filing.
Two months later, Kilpatrick leased the Infiniti.
The former mayor has a long fascination with expensive cars.
In 2005, the city leased a $57,000 red Lincoln Navigator to chauffeur the mayor and his family. The lease was controversial because the city was facing a $231 million budget deficit, a financial problem that ultimately would balloon and force Detroit into the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.
In December, nine months after buying the Infiniti, a consulting firm linked to Kilpatrick’s wife paid $807,000 for a 5,673-square-foot home along a cul-de-sac east of the intersection of Nine Mile and Beck Road in Novi, according to Oakland County property records.
Pathfinder Consulting Firm LLC obtained a $645,600 mortgage on the five-bedroom, four-and-a-half bath home. It is unclear whether Kwame Kilpatrick is living in the home with his wife and their two children.
LaTicia Kilpatrick is listed as the LLC’s managing member and authorized agent on public records.
The home purchase was first reported by the Metro Times.
Most restitution ordered in federal cases has not been paid, according to a 2018 U.S. Government Accountability Office report that concluded oversight of collections could be improved. At the end of 2016, $110 billion in court-ordered restitution was unpaid and $100 billion was uncollectable because defendants were unable to pay.
Last fiscal year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Michigan collected $68,224,759 in criminal and civil actions, including judgments, fines, restitution, and forfeitures. That is more than twice the office’s $24.9 million operating budget.
After leaving prison, Kilpatrick faced a pile of debt. That included more than $1 million in restitution from the federal racketeering case — one of the largest public corruption scandals in U.S. history — and a separate text-message scandal that led to his ouster as Detroit mayor. As part of that scandal pleaded guilty to two felonies and agreed to spend 120 days in jail, repay $1 million to the city, resign as mayor and forfeit his government pension to Detroit.
He hasn’t paid anything on the $854,062.60 that he still owes in restitution from that case since February 2013, according to Wayne County Circuit Court records, despite leasing the SUV and selling copies of his memoir for $19.99.
The IRS, meanwhile, hit him with a $634,000 lien for unpaid taxes in July 2022 that accused him of failing to pay money from the bulk of his tenure as mayor. He also owes a $390,000 civil penalty to the government stemming from a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit and a nearly $7.5 million judgment to a firm owned by the late minority contractor Willie McCormick.