Original subtitles

You're watching CNBC On Demand.

In this episode of American Greed, the $81 billion business of mass

incarceration and how head of prisons Chris Epps makes a killing in the lock

-up state of Mississippi.

Earl Berry has been a career criminal.

He's known to play for and draw for and like to crack a lot of jokes.

He's not doing a lot of joking today.

What he controlled was just amazing.

What Epps controls as the state's prison commissioner is a $350 million a year

gold mine.

Chris Epps gives.

If Epps, their person, should get this contract, he would.

And takes.

Like, he deserved to wear a Rolex watch. He deserved to drive a Mercedes -Benz.

condos down in the Gulf Coast.

Why would one business partner be paying another business partner's home

mortgage? That's not out of the goodness of your heart. That's not an accident.

Because Chris Epps knows everything from a bag of chips to a phone call home has

a price tag.

All of these services businesses are competing for and they're worth a lot of

money. And he's running one of the largest pay -to -play schemes in

history. Chris Epps touched everything, and it turned out almost everything

Chris Epps touched was corrupt.

Chris Epps likes to say he's the tallest hog at the trough.

At some point, we reminded him that hog is typically the first to get

slaughtered.

At the FBI office in Jackson, Mississippi, the feds have called a

meeting with Prison Commissioner Christopher F., head honcho of the

Department of Corrections.

We came up with the scenario to get him to come meet. He's used to going to

meetings with public figures. He didn't necessarily think that something was

wrong.

Our initial interaction was very friendly, and then we just wanted him to

something real quick.

Because today's gathering is, in fact, a carefully constructed ruse.

For months, the feds have been tapping his phone and collecting undercover

video. The results of those efforts are queued up on the video screen and ready

to roll.

And now they tighten the screws.

We hit play.

And that was enough for him to go, oh, no.

We have video of those who had been paying the kickbacks to Mr. Epps.

Handing him cash and having Mr. Adams just flip through the cash, it was

appearing. He appeared to be visibly upset.

And when I say upset, he was firing, shaking.

There's no better persuasion tool than a video recording. He's not

a good guy at this point.

No matter what you may have thought of him prior to this, he's been on the take

for the last seven to eight years.

This is a story about the big business of locking people up.

Now that they go by, this don't cross my mind several, several, several times.

And how it made Chris Epps very powerful and rich.

To understand Chris Epps, it helps to understand where he came from.

Epps' life would have been seen as almost an American success story. I

grew up in the poorest county in America, Holmes County, Mississippi.

Raised on his grandparents' farm, Epps recalls pulling turnips and feeding

chickens each morning before school.

He applies that same hard work ethic to earn his degree in education before he

takes a job with the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

He begins at the bottom, a lowly guard.

Epsis said in the past that he was at first terrified of being around so many

felons, and with good reason.

The state penitentiary known as Parchman has been notorious since 1901.

Established more for profit than rehabilitation, according to Jerry

journalist and MacArthur genius who has investigated Mississippi prisons for

years.

Parchment was a plantation they essentially converted into a prison with

the inmates working the fields.

And by the way, they didn't just work their fields. They would dole them out

basically plantations around there.

In other words, it's a for -profit scheme.

They had the inmates working at the cotton fields from sunup to sundown. And

state was just raking in the money from this.

And they could whip them, and they actually used that whip up until the

which is hard to believe, but it's true.

In 1972, the federal court reminds Mississippi that slavery is over and

it to abandon its plantation -era policies.

But in Mississippi, reform is a hard road to hoe.

Once prisons began to cost money, Mississippi didn't in turn really want

these prisons, so you had really horrible conditions.

Civil lawsuits on behalf of inmates cite sewage backups, extreme isolation, and

dehumanizing conditions.

And they just open and put us in hell, man. Look at the flow.

Dawn,

she asks that we use only her first name, has a husband who has served time

Parchman since 1998.

She says in the summer, temperatures inside the prison hit 100 degrees or

And you watch the older inmates.

Regardless of their crime, you just watch them one by one just kind of die

because they can't take the heat.

Parchman, I believe, is pretty much the worst of the worst.

Climbing the ranks to head of security at Parchman, Epps witnesses these

transgressions and more.

He saw the inmates hungry, fighting mad.

He saw the sewers backed up. He saw the leaking roof.

So he came from knowledge.

The abuses are as commonplace as they are shocking.

Mississippi became one of the first prisons in the United States to have

conjugal visits.

Is it a humanitarian reform, allowing inmates to connect with their loved

Not exactly.

It's a money -making scheme that turns guards into pimps. The correctional

officers had someone type up the dummy marriage certificate and brought in

prostitutes. And then the guards, of course, were getting a cut of this.

Mitchell's sources suggest that Parchman's culture of corruption twisted

moral compass.

I've talked to people who were in prison, inmates in prison in the 1970s

Parchment, and they told me Chris Epps was corrupt way back then. It was

something that had been going on the whole time.

But Epps has learned how things work in the Mississippi prison system, and he

has a knack for politics.

He flies through the ranks collecting a string of awards, says former

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood.

He was in the National Guard. He served our state and our country. He was the

president of the American Corrections Association.

And, you know, you love to see somebody come up and run and start at the bottom.

Jimmy Gates covered state politics as a journalist for the Clarion Ledger in

Jackson. This man was unique in the sense with his folksy style. You know,

everybody liked the Chris Epps. You know, he was loved.

In the black community, you know, he was loved in the white community, you know,

at that time.

I think he saw himself as being a public official, you know, maybe even governor

one day.

In 2002, Epps is tapped for the number one post at the MDOC, Commissioner of

Corrections.

Next on American Greed, whispers around the state capitol, how does a humble

public servant live so large?

Looking back, I think to drive a $100 ,000 car and have a $10 ,000 Rolex watch

on a state government salary would be pretty questionable to most folks.

By 2005, Chris Epps has worked his way up to the top. As commissioner of the

Mississippi Department of Corrections, And he's the only African -American

director of a Mississippi agency.

He's an ace at schmoozing legislators.

Once he became commissioner, he made it a point that he knew the legislature.

He knew the names of each legislator's wives, whether they had kids. You know,

he was just that folksy kind of type person, you know, made you feel at ease

with him.

He uses that down -home charm even when delivering tough news, like at this lead

-up to the execution of Earl Berry, an inmate on death row.

Errol Berry has been a career criminal.

He's known to play for and draw for and like to play a lot and crack a lot of

jokes.

He's not doing a lot of joking today.

He was able to convince the state lawmakers to basically give him the

wanted, the vast majority of the time.

They loved him.

It was the same way with the media, including myself. I just love this guy,

I'm saying this as a...

African -American person, you know, just seeing another African -American male

doing something that we don't see often here in the state of Mississippi.

And Epps has successfully led the state to one of the lowest costs per inmate in

the nation, about $41 per day.

But there's a flip side to that equation.

Civil rights lawsuits naming both the Department of Corrections and Epps

accuse him of providing grossly inadequate shelter and sanitation.

and neglecting mentally ill prisoners.

Epps fires back in the press saying, the ACLU hasn't got a clue about running a

prison. He's cultivated an image as a straight -talking prisons expert with

impeccable tastes.

The guy wore custom -tailored suits.

He wore a Rolex.

He drove a Mercedes.

There's also his gated home in Flowood, an affluent suburb of Jackson.

a second Mercedes driven by his wife, and a waterfront condo on the

Gulf Coast.

As a state employee, Epps' take -home salary is about $132 ,000 a year.

Looking back, I think to drive a $100 ,000 car and to live in a half -million

-dollar home and have a $10 ,000 Rolex watch on a state government salary would

be pretty questionable to most folks.

In Mississippi, prisons are a big business.

The state ranks third in the nation for the number of people incarcerated per

capita. With all those people locked up, the Department of Corrections is

Mississippi's third largest employer.

Its annual budget is nearly $350 million.

More than half is doled out to government contracts.

Whether it's commissary or telephones or medical, all of these services

businesses are competing for, and they're worth a lot of money.

Molly Motley Blythe is with the FBI in Jackson.

Whoever gets that, that's their bread and butter. That's their livelihood.

The reliance on private contractors stems from the 1990s tough -on -crime

sentencing, which caused Mississippi prisons to overflow.

Seeking to avoid federal fines for overcrowding, the state turns to for

companies to build more prisons.

There was a huge battle in the legislature.

A lot of the corporate interest came in, spread money around the legislature,

and they voted to open up private prisons.

Now, in his job as commissioner, Chris Epps seems to have the clout to steer

contracts to any company he prefers.

Normally, you know, a public contract, you're going to have bids, but with the

Department of Corrections, they allowed them to have this huge number of no -bid

contracts. You know, the legislature is involved with certain things, but for

the most part, it's hands -off. It's what they trust in, whatever you want to

do. In 2007, Epps signs off on a no -bid contract with a company named GT

Enterprises, owned by Cecil McCrory.

Cecil McCrory and Chris Epps, you know, seem to have some bond. I think it goes

back to when McCrory was once a legislator on the Corrections Committee.

McCrory already has his finger in a lot of pies.

Now he's using that good old boy network to get into business with state

prisons. With his newly inked contract, McCrory's company will supply

merchandise to prison commissaries throughout Mississippi.

Inmates are barred from receiving food, snacks, and toiletries from their

families. They have to purchase these items through the commissary.

Typically inmates don't have much money, and so this may be coming from families

or whatever, and so they're buying these things, but they're gouging them.

Dawn says she spends $400 each month on commissary at Parchman because inmates

like her husband are hungry and don't get enough food.

They feed grown men like you would feed a two -year -old toddler.

The portion sizes are...

There's so many things on the tray that you can't eat. The rice is uncooked. The

green beans, you never know if you're going to have a frog head in them.

mystery meat.

$400 a month is always hard for Dawn to manage.

But when she has to cut back her hours at work, the commissary is unaffordable,

and her husband pays the price.

I have photos of him before and after. He was...

and healthy and taking vitamins.

Once I was unable to provide the commissary, he shriveled up, just went

from one human being into a completely different human being.

And if he can't afford commissary, then he's starving, basically.

Meanwhile, McCrory lives high on the hog.

With the commissary contract, his company, GT Enterprises, gets a 75 % cut

the profits.

It amounts to millions made off of inmates and their families, according to

later reports by Jerry Mitchell.

You know, it's just ridiculous prices.

For example, a six -ounce bag of barbecue chips cost $1 at a discount

inmates and their families pay $3 .56 for a five -ounce bag in prison.

A dollar pack of AAA batteries will set them back four bucks.

In 2007 and 2008, McCrory's contract reels in over $3 .2 million in

profit. No big contracts. You can just go to a buddy of yours from high school

or a brother -in -law and give them a contract.

Special Agent Ty Breedlove works with the FBI in Jackson.

There's other people that did commissary, could provide the same

they were never considered because they weren't Cecil McCrory.

Cecil McCrory will later tell the feds it's around this time in 2007 that Epps

demands a share of the problem.

Over the next year, McCrory kicks up $3 ,000 or $4 ,000 a month for the GTE

contract.

Now, Chris may have had a little lark in his heart before, but when they began

this privatization of prisons, that...

poured money in Mississippi like we hadn't seen before.

Coming up on American Greed, Epps and McCrory target the billion -dollar -for

-profit prison industry.

It's just incredible what they did and how arrogant they got under everyone's

notice.

In Mississippi, prison commissioner Chris Epps and his buddy Cecil McCrory

partnered in a business of sorts.

Epps takes to CEO life like a pro, and why not?

They're teeing up to make a killing.

In 2008, McCrory sells his company, GT Enterprises, to the out -of -state

provider, Keef Commissaries, scoring a hefty profit.

Chris Epps signs the MDOC contract over to Keefe, but advises that they keep

McCrory on the payroll as a consultant.

Darren LaMarca is the U .S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi.

The larger corporations were told you need to have someone within Mississippi

who has access to the commissioner, and Cecil McCrory was pitched as that

person, and you need to pay him, whether it be...

$2 ,000, $4 ,000, $8 ,000 every month.

As the feds will later learn, this is the start of a lucrative pattern,

according to Mike Hurst.

The money started flowing from Cecil McCrory to Epps, and in return, the

contract started flowing from Chris Epps to Cecil McCrory.

Epps expected a portion of that. So they would meet once a month for coffee.

They'd meet at Waffle Houses all around town.

And they'd show up, and they'd do a handshake, and cash would go from

Epps, sit down, have a cup of coffee, and then they'd go their separate ways.

But despite selling GT Enterprises, McCrory hasn't simply sold out to become

consultant. He has a number of businesses, including a new entity he

College Street Leasing.

And in December 2009, Epps signed a lease between the MDOC and this new

of McCrory's.

College Street Leasing will operate two transition centers, also known as

halfway houses, to provide housing and work programs for male and female

in the town of Walnut Grove, Mississippi.

If prisons are a big business in Mississippi, they are absolutely huge in

Grove. The town of 1 ,900 people already has two prisons nearby.

Greg Wagner was sheriff of Walnut Grove for almost 20 years.

You had a regional prison that was under me.

You had a private prison in Walnut Grove. The transition centers were a

different story.

It hadn't been advertised. It was just done.

But a lot of things were done that way under Chris Epps' administration.

McCrory's company acts sort of like a work program, providing job

for inmates.

But not without taking a cut of the pay.

McCrory charges them $20 a day for room and board.

That's in addition to the $6 per inmate per day that the state pays McCrory.

And the work program?

It's slipshod at best.

The idea itself was terrible. The residents of Walnut Grove could go and

inmate and check them out on a Saturday morning, have them come clean their

house, and then return them like a library book.

To make matters worse, the books are checking themselves out of the library.

That was the men's facility there.

And they had a cyclone fence.

They got ready to leave. They just went out there and jumped over the fence. It

wasn't a big deal. Well, they would walk across from there and then come, like,

downtown and just walk around like they were free people.

Meanwhile, Epps promotes the transition centers as part of MDOC's cost -saving

agenda. When Chris would go to the legislature, Chris got what he wanted.

It seemed like it didn't matter.

But when Chris wasn't around the legislators, and it was a meeting, say,

just a group of sheriffs, it was all about Chris.

That side came out. He would say, I'm the tallest hog at the trough.

Now, that's a southern colloquial term, but what he's meaning is I am the most

important person in this room.

That sense of being untouchable also applies to the lesser hogs on Epps'

This building here, this was the women's facility.

Grady Sims is the mayor of Walnut Grove and warden of this transition center.

I cautioned Grady about the inmates out on the streets.

And Grady would just kind of brush it off what he thought was that Chris Epps

was going to cover him if anything happened.

In November 2009, Sheriff Greg Wagoner gets a visit from a local woman.

She had been an employee down there, and they'd let her go.

And she was ready to tell me what was going on.

It seems Grady Sims, the mayor slash warden, has been checking a female

out of one of the transition centers and into a local no -tell motel.

It's an explosive allegation.

The sheriff immediately contacts John Hunt.

One of Mississippi Department of Corrections' own investigators.

Together, they launch a case looking into the suspected sex abuse.

But just as things are gathering steam, Hunt informs him their case has been

shut down.

So what are you talking about? Everything that you've uncovered is

more and more felonies. You don't just stop it. He said, I know.

But he stopped.

Turned around and walked out.

Who killed their case?

The sheriff has just one suspect,

Chris Epps, Commissioner of the Department of Corrections.

It was obvious to me that that came from Commissioner Epps. He wouldn't have

shut it down without Chris Epps wanting to shut it down.

I knew at that point I couldn't just allow this to go on.

FBI Special Agent Ty Breedlove remembers hearing the sheriff's story.

The case was progressing as it should.

The only thing that was different was getting the call from Commissioner Epps

saying, you can stand down, we're not investigating that.

He says Chris Epps not only shuts down the investigation, he rubs it in when he

runs into the chief investigator, John Hunt, at work.

John Hunt was leaving his office at the Department of Corrections, and he sees

Commissioner Epps smoking a cigar and yelled across the parking lot, and he

says, there goes John Hunt. He always gets his man and starts laughing, and

just kind of laughed.

you know, back and then got in the car and was like, son of a bitch.

We figured the person that could fill in the missing pieces would be Mayor Sims

himself.

When confronted, Grady Sims strikes a deal and pleads guilty to federal

tampering. It triggers the start of a federal probe into McCrory and F.

They dub it Operation Mississippi Hustle.

Luckily, people like to talk in the hospitality state.

You start hearing the same things, and then you start hearing things about Epps

telling people that his mortgage has been paid off or that he may have a

on the coast and he's driving very flashy vehicles.

Everything that Cecil McCrory did involved corrections, and it had to be

with Commissioner Epps' approval.

Their relationship could explain Epps deep -sixing the investigation of Grady

Sims. Cecil McCrory was trying to sell that facility, and they didn't need more

bad publicity. They had several people escape.

And then now you had the sexual assault allegations.

We knew that Cecil was making a living off of his relationship with the

commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Prosecutors combed through McCrory's bank finances.

Our financial analyst was going through, I mean, thousands and thousands of

pages of records.

Going back to July of 2008, Cecil McCrory withdrew a cashier's check from

personal bank account in the amount of $100 ,000.

The check is made payable to Countrywide Bank, which holds the mortgage on Epps'

Flowood home.

I remember her calling me right from down the hall saying, I found it, I

it. And I ran down to her office, and she had found wire transfers that Cecil

McCrory had made directly to Chris Epps' home mortgage.

Why would one business partner be paying another business partner's home

mortgage? That's not out of the goodness of your heart. That's not an accident.

The last one was the exact amount to pay off Commissioner Epps' home when you

were on to something.

There was some celebratory dancing at the U .S. Attorney's Office, and Mike

Hurst did a little dance. I don't recommend that you all ever see that,

was very excited about it.

Next on American Greed, the money rolls in.

Epps had so much money coming in, he didn't know what to do with all of it.

suddenly, friends shift allegiance.

This relationship had existed for so long, there was no reason for Epps not

trust him.

By 2013,

Chris Epps is America's longest -serving prison commissioner, withstanding both

Democratic and Republican governors.

One constant has been an increasing reliance on for -profit private prisons.

Three different private contractors have operated East Mississippi since it

opened, including Management Training Corp. and GEO.

Those were probably the biggest contracts MDOC awarded, and Cecil was a

consultant for all of those companies.

Management and training court, and they came into business. McCrory asked for $6

,000 a month, and Epps said that's way too low.

So he called McCrory back later and said, I got us $12 ,000. He literally

I got us $12 ,000, because they split it. So McCrory still got his six, but

got his six.

The more money that Cecil made... the more money he could give back to

Commissioner Epps.

Chris Epps and his buddy Cecil McCrory don't know it, but the feds have

wiretapped their phones, and they're tracking every move.

We had a few other people that we suspected that were doing the same thing

Epps, so we put together a pretty big chart.

It turns out McCrory is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

The kickbacks don't just involve McCrory's companies and out -of -state

consulting contracts, but also lobbyists and elected officials, including

Mississippi movers and shakers like Teresa Malone, the wife of a former

lawmaker. Teresa Malone was an intended beneficiary of what her husband was able

to do for Mr. Epps.

Herb Benjamin, a former state senator.

Dr. Carl Reddix, a physician who provides medical care for inmates at

prisons.

Dr. Reddix actually paid Mr.

Epps thousands of dollars each month.

And Sam Wagoner, a distant cousin of the Leak County Sheriff.

You have a $40 ,000 wire transfer to the commissioner from one of the subjects,

and then two days later there's a contract that gets approved.

While Epps and McCrory's scheme is driven by greed, former Attorney General

Hood points the finger at more than $3 billion in revenue earned by the

private prisons.

Those companies will pay a lot to get one of those contracts.

That's been the root of a lot of evil in our prison system.

In March, FBI agents initiate a meeting with Cecil McCrory.

It was all about, let's get Cecil first, then we can probably figure out who

else is dirty.

Agents asked him about Chris Epps and if he knows anything about kickbacks or

bribes. He was just like, absolutely not. I don't know what you're talking

about. We rolled out the sheet of transactions and pointed to the mortgage

payment.

And McCrory said, well, I might know a little something about that.

Not only did he fill in missing pieces about...

His bribe payments, at that point it became clear, Dr. Reddick's, Herb

Theresa Malone, everybody that had been on our radar, they were giving him money

he wasn't entitled to.

McCrory spells out how he eventually became the bag man for all of Epps'

cronies. Cecil told us that Commissioner Epps was just getting bribes from

everybody. He didn't know what to do with the money, so he asked them to

it and then wire it up to his investment account.

Coffee became their code for let's get together and you pay me my money.

According to McCrory, those handoffs could amount to shocking amounts of

and at those Waffle House meetings, the money now flows from Epps to McCrory.

It's still Epps' money, but McCrory is helping him deposit it.

One time, Epps brings him a gift, a duffel bag that McCrory mistakes for a

souvenir. It was swag that you get at these conferences, and Cecil was like,

well, I don't need another bag, so he didn't pay any attention to it. So they

have their coffee, and then they get up to leave.

McCrory had left the bag behind when Epps stopped him at the door.

The commissioner looks at Cecil and says, hey, where's your bag?

He's like, go get the bag right now.

And so Cecil goes back in, and he's like, what's the big deal with this bag?

Opens it up, there's $40 ,000 in cash in the bag with a note that has all the

wiring instructions for Commissioner Epps' investment account retirement

During Epps' reign, the cost of inmate phone calls had reported to have risen

$14 a minute.

Investigators learned Epps takes a percentage of those profits, too.

Even the supply of urine test cups includes a lucrative kickback to the

commissioner. It involved inmate health care.

It involved the telephone system, the private prisons.

Chris Epps touched everything, and it turned out almost everything Chris Epps

touched was corrupt.

Meanwhile, Chris Epps resorts to stashing all that cash at banks around

He was taking those bribes back to his home, and then he would deposit those

into multiple bank accounts. One example is July 30, 2009, and he made four

stops at four different bank branches and deposited $9 ,000 at each

bank branch.

So $36 ,000 on his drive into work.

He knew that if you deposit cash in amounts of $10 ,000 or more, it would

trigger a reporting requirement from the local bank.

He was getting money from so many sources, I don't know how he kept up

Next on American Greed.

There's always this comment about the tallest hog in the trough, and so at

point we reminded him that hog is typically the first to get slaughtered.

more greed?

Follow us on Instagram, connect with us on Facebook, and listen to the American

Greed Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll be right back.

In 2014, as feds watched the money from kickbacks and bribes pass hands,

investigators nicknamed Chris Epps Big Money.

The Wire.

had been up 60 days, and we had compiled plenty of evidence.

He is a smart guy, and if we laid out everything we have, he's going to say, I

have no choice but to cooperate.

They call Epps to a meeting with the FBI under the ruse they're investigating a

possible death threat.

We were all excited.

This is the room we used, and...

We had a video ready and queued up for the moment that we were going to tell

we knew what he'd been up to.

As soon as the video started playing, he broke out to a sweat and began wiping

his forehead with a handkerchief.

I can remember the video we chose.

He was in his car, and he's wearing his National Guard shirt.

He was retired from the National Guard.

And he giggles in the video when he takes the cash.

He's just giddy.

That was the $18 ,000 bribe payment that we had given him just a few days prior.

The juxtaposition between what was on the screen and the way his face looked

when he saw it would make anybody feel sad because it was a very hard moment

him to understand that he was in big trouble.

Faced with the insurmountable evidence, Epps agrees to flip sides.

We went back to his house. We took...

$65 ,000 from his safe that day. We put the titles to both of his Mercedes.

Quite a few things started happening right from the very first day.

Like how Epps seemed to enjoy the power that comes with being a government

informer. A lot of times when you're putting a wire on somebody, it takes

an hour.

Not with the commissioner.

That would be like a three -hour conversation because he loved to talk.

And he was super nice, but...

Listening to him on the Title III on the wire, you got a little bit different

taste of his personality because he did bully other people that he worked with.

You know, he would kind of hang up and then kind of laugh, like, don't mess

me. You know, I'm the tallest hog at the trough.

We'd heard it firsthand.

And so at some point we reminded him that hog is typically the first to get

slaughtered.

And he had never thought about that. But he's not wrong. He was corrections.

And nobody questioned anything he did.

But as Epps amassed his network of cronies, he's created a system that's

dangerous for both staff and prisoners.

Jerry Mitchell and reporters at the Clarion Ledger publish a series on

Mississippi prisons.

We ran a huge package of stories and just delineated corruption, beatings,

violence, just all these things that were happening behind bars.

Reporters ask Epps whether low -paid officers are susceptible to bribes. Epps

says, I believe it's the character of the individual that makes a person

susceptible to many things.

That was rather ironic, wasn't it?

On November 5, 2014, Chris Epps quits his job as commissioner at the

Department of Corrections without notice.

A day later, Chris Epps and Cecil McCrory are indicted on allegations of

fraud, bribery, money laundering, and tax evasion.

U .S. attorneys point to nearly $1 billion worth of private prison

almost $1 million in bribes.

Literally like 10 days after our series ended, the corrections commissioner

was indicted by a federal grand jury.

So what can I say?

To me, that was just proof. All this corruption was true.

Everybody knew there was others involved.

The FBI, you know, the U .S. Attorney's Office, you know, they would just tell

us, just hold on, you know, more is coming.

Up next, Chris Epps gets caught pilfering again.

Why Chris Epps would want to steal while he's on probation for a billion -dollar

public corruption case. That doesn't make sense. It defies logic.

On November 6, 2014, Chris Epps and Cecil McClory appear in U .S. District

Court in Jackson, Mississippi, on a 49 -count federal indictment.

Again, this wasn't just a Mississippi public corruption case. This is

that had national implications because many businesses from outside the state

Mississippi were participating.

In our office, our job is really just beginning.

The indictment is just the opening salvo.

Epson McCrory plead not guilty and are released on bail, but each could face

more than 200 years behind bars if convicted.

I sat in the courtroom the other day, you know, when the former commissioner,

you know, the commissioner that I looked up to, you know, with shackles on his

legs, you know, how could this have happened, you know?

But even with the specter of a prison sentence looming, Epps hasn't lost his

swagger. He shows up to federal court wearing his Rolex watch that a state

employee has somehow bought and who's claiming his innocence in federal court.

That was Chris Epps. A few days later, the former commissioner strides into his

local Mercedes -Benz dealership.

They had their car seized and house seized.

He went out and got his wife another Mercedes Benz, and we found out about

and reported that too.

It was just incredible.

This is not the only trouble Epps steps in.

I guess he got the idea that he could go back to his old house, which was in

possession of the Marshal Service, and get his old landscaping lights.

So he went back over there, lifted the garage open, and he ripped the circuit

board out of the wall and then went out and pulled up all the lights.

He's on probation for a billion -dollar public corruption case.

It doesn't make sense. It defies logic.

Again, his arrogance is the reason he did that. He thought he could go back to

that house that the government owned and get some of his property because he was

Chris Epps.

Epps is arrested and charged with burglary.

This time, the judge denies the bail.

Over the next three years, a host of players are sentenced in the bribery

scandal. This entire investigation ended up being the largest, most complex, far

-reaching public corruption investigation in Mississippi's history.

I tell you, God is our witness. We're going to come after the other corrupt

politicians, and we're going to clean up this state for our kids and our

grandkids. Former legislator Herb Benjamin is sentenced to six years for

Epps in connection with drug treatment programs and consulting contracts.

Dr. Carl Reddix is sentenced to six years for paying kickbacks to Epps in

exchange for providing care to inmates at East Mississippi.

In 2016, Teresa Dolan Malone, the widow of a former state rep, is sentenced to

three years, five months for giving bribes to Epps through McCrory.

She confessed in the same way that the others did.

She would say she did work, but there's no records of anything actually

occurring. And then she would pay Epps. And in her mind, it just didn't make

sense that she had done anything wrong.

Agent Molly Motley -Blythe says Epps gave a similar response.

We had lengthy conversations where he would explain that this was just a tip.

This was just a thank you for allowing us to work in Mississippi.

Attorney General Jim Hood sued companies associated with the bribery scandal,

saying they owed nearly a billion dollars in revenue due to Mississippi's

-racketeering laws.

These three companies had $660 million contracts.

It's a lot of money in Mississippi.

They weren't Mississippi companies.

So they saw the money flowing in Mississippi, and they came in and took

advantage of it.

I made them pay not only the profit, but in many instances, their whole

contracts.

None of the companies admit to wrongdoing, and no criminal charges were

against them.

Many assert that their contracts were not linked to kickbacks.

But most agreed to settle, and in 2019,

Hood's office recovers $26 million in settlements.

Cecil McCrory is sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for money

laundering. Federal prosecutors recommended a lenient sentence for Chris

light of his cooperation.

But the judge disagrees.

In 2017, Chris Epps, the man who spent three decades running Mississippi

prisons, is sentenced to just under 20 years behind bars.

For Dawn, whose husband served time at Parchman, justice was slow and costly.

These are our mothers, our daughters.

Just like the men or our husbands, he just felt like he was untouchable, like

could just do whatever he wanted to do to the inmates, to the inmates'

and get away with it for all those years.

The problem was with these kickbacks, the money wasn't going back into the

prison system, and so it's all of society that suffered by that

Whenever somebody who's in public power is lining their pockets, everybody who

believed in them suffers.