HATTIESBURG, Miss. – Former Mississippi Department of Marine Resources Director (DMR), Bill Walker, will spend the next five years in prison and will have to pay back a half million dollars in restitution. That sentenced was handed down Monday from a U.S. District Judge Court Judge. In March he plead guilty to aiding his son’s company with DMR money and for funneling money from the department into a private foundation that Walker owned himself.
Walker had been director of the DMR since 2002 and was fired January 2013 while federal and state investigations at the department were underway.