BARBOUR COUNTY, Ala (WDHN)— A longtime Barbour County Sheriff has pled guilty to felony ethics charges.
According to the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, during a plea hearing in the Barbour County Circuit Court, Leroy Upshaw admitted that during his 20 years as the Barbour County Sheriff, he, or a sheriff’s office employee acting on his orders, wrote him checks totaling $32,135 drawn from the official sheriff’s office bank accounts.
The $32,135 was meant to support law enforcement and care for prisoners, but Upshaw says those checks went to bank accounts owned by him or his family.
Upshaw, 52, pled guilty to using his office or official position for personal gain, a class B felony.
Abusing the taxpayers’ money will not be tolerated in our state, and I am pleased the
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall
defendant will be held accountable for betraying the public’s trust
Upshaw was sheriff from January 2007 to January 2019. In September 2020, the Attorney General’s Special Prosecutions Division obtained two warrants related to the ethics charges, and he surrendered himself to the Barbour County Sheriff’s Office on September 28, 2020.
Upshaw was indicted in March 2021.
