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Douglas Diggs
Douglass Diggs, a well-connected Detroit developer, comes from an interesting background.
His father was Congressman Charles Diggs Jr., convicted of public corruption in 1978. The elder Diggs served 14 months in prison and died in 1998. His mother was U.S. District Judge Anna DIggs Taylor, who died last November.
Now the son is in the public spotlight, but not for a good reason. He's accused of pocketing money belonging to one of the Detroit city pensions.
He apparently avoided criminal charges by quietly paying the pension system nearly $700,000 in October, Ross Jones of WXYZ reports:
For just over 30 months, Douglass Diggs was a court-appointed receiver for the Detroit Police and Fire Pension System. He was brought in after the pension board gave a $10 million loan to an investor that promised to buy distressed properties throughout the city that he would then resell.
But the deal turned out to be a scam. The pension board lost millions and was left holding on to thousands of homes, many of them in poor condition. To help pick up the pieces, a judge turned to Diggs to serve as the pension system’s court-appointed receiver...
When Diggs sold off homes, he was supposed to deposit the proceeds into a special fund set up for the pension system. But he didn’t always do that.
Diggs ended up depositing some of the money into his own bank accounts. When confronted, he agreed to repay nearly $700,000 -- an amount that included his fees for services.
The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office, U.S. attorney and state attorney general's Office declined to press charges.
