A former grants manager for the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office pled guilty this week to using his perch at the agency to orchestrate a sweeping theft scheme, admitting to siphoning cash marked for prisoner rehabilitation and other programs into his own pocket.
The former sheriff’s office employee, Kenneth Lawson, funneled cash from a federal Justice Department grant to a firm he claimed was an OPSO subgrantee. But prosecutors said Lawson had set up the firm under a false name, and it had no ties to the office.
Lawson and a co-conspirator, Areion Banks, initially pleaded not guilty to conspiracy counts after a federal grand jury returned an 11-page indictment against the pair on Aug. 25, 2025. The scheme was part of a broader pattern of financial mismanagement uncovered by an internal agency audit in 2024…