Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's Family Helps Pay His Restitution

(March 8) -- Kwame Kilpatrick's supporters, it seems, are in the family.

The disgraced ex-mayor of Detroit owes the city $1 million in restitution for a text-messaging sex scandal that got him booted out of office two years ago. And according to prosecutors, 89 of the money orders that have helped Kilpatrick make his payments thus far have come from family members, including his mother, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the money orders from family members amount to $40,223. Kin such as Kilpatrick's grandfather, Marvel Cheeks, and his sister, Ayanna Ferguson, appear to be helping the ex-mayor pay off his debt. Kilpatrick, who now works as a computer salesman in Texas, has argued that he can afford to pay only $6 a month in restitution.

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in court on Jan. 10, 2010

Paul Sancya, AP

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, here at a Jan. 20 court hearing, may be headed back to jail if he can't pay the city the restitution he owes.

Last month, the Detroit Free Press reported that Kilpatrick's family members had gathered at Butcher's Inn Tequila and Margarita Bar in Detroit to figure out how to help their wayward relative pay back the city.

In 2008, Kwame Kilpatrick served 99 days in jail for lying under oath and illegally demoting police officers to hide his extramarital affair.

In February, Kilpatrick violated his parole by failing to meet a $79,000 restitution payment, and Friday, a Michigan court denied appeals by Kilpatrick's lawyer to stop a parole violation hearing. Unless he can come up with that amount, plus another $240,000 in April, some say the ex-mayor may be headed back to jail.

Larry Dubin, a law professor at the University of Detroit Mercy, said the Michigan appeals judge seems to have lost his patience with Kilpatrick. "The possibility of sending him to jail for a period of time so that he can contemplate the seriousness of abiding by his terms of probation seems real," Dubin told the Detroit Free Press on Friday.