5 Accused In Dolly Parton Wildfire Fund Scam

SEVIERVILLE, TN — Five people devised an elaborate scheme to scam thousands of dollars from the fund set up by beloved country music legend Dolly Parton to aid victims of the wildfire that devastated Sevier County last year, according to an indictment.

A Sevier County grand jury indicted Debra Kay Catlett; her son, Chad Alan Chambers; Rocco Boscalia; Annie Lyons; and Esther Pridemore on charges including money laundering, criminal conspiracy and felony theft.

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Parton established the fund — which ultimately gave $9 million to 900 families — shortly after a wildfire swept out of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and devastated the quaint resort community of Gatlinburg and nearby areas. The five were among those who received funds, making off with $12,000 before fund administrators and investigators noticed something fishy and stopped payment before they received the entire allotment.

Catlett, who works as a photographer for various real estate publications, had a database of rental properties and their owners, according to the indictment.

The cabal used the database to find cabins which had burned and then falsified leases, forging the signatures of the actual property owners. The indictment said they then used those leases to obtain temporary driver's licenses under a program the state set-up to help wildfire victims whose licenses were destroyed in the blaze.

They then used those leases and licenses as proof they'd lost their homes in the fire and signed up for aid from Parton's My People Fund, according to the indictment. Two of the five were not Sevier County residents. Another was a Sevier County resident, insofar as that person was in the county jail at the time of the fire.

David Dotson, president of the Dollywood Foundation, which administered the fund, told the Knoxville News Sentinel that the foundation stopped accepting the temporary licenses as proof of residency when officials realized the low burden of proof required to obtain one.

"No one had to prove anything to get the temporary driver's licenses," Dotson told the paper. "We started having suspicions ... None of these folks (the alleged scammers) made it through the entire distribution process (before being discovered). Law enforcement responded in a very timely and thorough manner."

The presentment was handed down in July and remained sealed until the first arrests were made this week, according to The Mountain Press.

Image via Flickr user Linda Stanley, used under Creative Commons