Outside the Richland County Courthouse on Friday, March 14, 2025. (Photo by Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — A South Carolina sheriff and a former county supervisor stand accused of laundering $27,000 in federal COVID relief funds to illegally inflate the sheriff’s paycheck.
A grand jury indicted newly suspended Williamsburg County Sheriff Stephen Gardner and the county’s former supervisor, Tiffany Cooks, on five counts each, which included charges of money laundering, embezzlement, misconduct, ethics violations and conspiracy. Each crime carries maximum sentences of five to 10 years in prison, according to prosecutors.
Judge Heath Taylor released both Gardner and Cooks following a hearing held Friday in Columbia on the promise they would make all court appearances. If either were to miss a hearing they would be jailed and held on a bond of $100,000.
Neither Gardner nor Cooks made any kind of statement in court.
Gov. Henry McMaster suspended Gardner, a Kingstree native with 25 years of law enforcement experience, after the indictment Wednesday. The governor appointed Clemson Wright Jr., a special agent with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, as the county’s acting sheriff.
Gardner, a Democrat first elected in 2016, was re-elected sheriff in November with no opposition in the rural county of fewer than 30,000 people.
Cooks, elected supervisor in 2018, served one term but was defeated in the 2022 Democratic primary election by former county Sheriff Kelvin Washington. She is currently working as administrator for the town of Estill, 130 miles away in Hampton County.
In court, state prosecutor Creighton Waters alleged Gardner and Cooks schemed to re-route tens of thousands of dollars in coronavirus relief funds to pay the sheriff overtime wages, despite the fact the sheriff was a salaried county employee already earning six figures and therefore not eligible for overtime pay.
Waters claimed they did this by overpaying a friend of the sheriff contracted to do landscaping work for the county. Cooks would cut checks to the landscaper, who would then cash them and give the money over to the sheriff.
The two would meet off site in a parking lot and the landscaper would “hand over a big old pile of cash,” said Waters, assistant deputy attorney general.
The sheriff then paid the landscaper his hourly wages out of the cash and pocketed the rest himself.
Both Gardner and Cooks allegedly approached the landscaper telling him that all of this was above board, and he would not get in any legal trouble.
“Ultimately, your honor, this was a farce,” Waters told the judge.
The State Law Enforcement Division opened an investigation into the Williamsburg County officials in February 2023, after Cooks’ successor discovered a combined $210,000 in overtime pay to salaried elected officials in the county, The Post and Courier and The Kingstree News previously reported.
In addition to the sheriff, Cooks allegedly funneled money to herself, the treasurer, the clerk of court, the auditor and a probate judge. Those other alleged payments were not part of the indictment from the attorney general’s office.
Federal prosecutors traditionally have taken the lead on these types of cases involving misappropriation of the federal funds doled out to businesses, non-profits and individuals, as well as state and local governments strapped for cash in the midst of a global pandemic.
Waters told the SC Daily Gazette federal prosecutors ultimately did not pursue federal charges and handed the case over to the state attorney general about three months ago. He declined to say why.