LIVINGSTON — The Livingston Parish District Attorney says he is opening an investigation into whether there was any criminal wrongdoing on Councilwoman Erin Sandefur’s part in regards to copies of checks. It comes after the Livingston Parish government concluded their internal investigation into how unredacted checks written by the parish government ended up on a political mail flyer. Because the files of the checks ended up in the hands of a parish councilwoman, the parish was unable to proceed further with an investigation because she is an elected official.
“We are looking into potential criminal conduct on the release of the financial records that belong to parish government,” District Attorney Scott Perrilloux told UWK about the next steps. Malfeasance is a possible charge if any criminal wrongdoing is discovered, he said.
These checks displayed banking account information for the parish and ended up “compromising” the parish’s account—which kicked off the process of closing the account and opening a new one.
The checks in the mailer were illustrating how the Moody Law Firm—where District Attorney candidate Sherman Mack’s opponent Brad Cascio worked—made “hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees” through lawsuits per the flyer, which Cascio says is “simply not true.”
On Thursday, Councilwoman Sandefur issued UWK the following statement:
I committed no crime. This is political rhetoric. I had concerns about corruption in the billing practices surrounding Deer Run. I asked for the payments to the Moody Law Firm and they were given to me from Parish government, and I shared them. There is no law that prohibits any resident of this parish from making public, public documents. Would a person paid by the Parish be subject to a criminal investigation if they made their payment public or is this just weaponization of the DAs office? I was not informed by the administration that the documents were in any way confidential. If the administration made a mistake then it should investigate itself.
The District Attorney’s response to Sandefur is that her comparison isn’t fair or accurate: “She turned it over to a political candidate, and it was published—not just made public. Well, it was made public to thousands of people. So I don’t think the comparison’s fair.”
Perrilloux added that he’s lost on what Sandefur means by the “weaponization” of his office. “First of all, she admitted she did this. Number two, her reasons for doing it were obviously bogus, and number three, the parish has suffered harm from this. I believe it warrants looking into further.”
At this point, he doesn’t know whether Sandefur could face any charges, and that’s why his office is still investigating exactly what happened and why it happened at all.
In the parish records, there are two different color checks; one means it’s a canceled original, while the other is a public records version that has redacted portions. Parish President Randy Delatte told UWK that the parish has a specific employee who handles public records requests. “We have a person that does public records, and he never got a request, so he never redacted nothing,” Delatte said.
Because the check information was not obtained through the appropriate public records process, the parish ordered an internal investigation into how the records were released. Private law firms are not subject to public records. While Moody Law Firm is a private law firm, it also has a contract with the Livingston Parish Government.
Internal investigation by the parish
According to information and statements sent by the Livingston Parish Government, on Aug. 5, 2026, Parish Council Deputy Clerk Caroline Lockhart sent an email to Deputy Finance Director Gail Housley requesting financial records of what the council had paid the Moody Law Firm for the years 2023 through 2026.
The copies of these requested financials were put onto a flash drive, because the files were too large for email transfer, according to an email Housley sent to Parish President Randy Delatte. That flash drive was hand-delivered to council clerk Raven Watts on Aug. 6, her email said.
According to an email by Watts, between Aug. 5 and 6, she gave the flash drive to Livingston Parish Councilwoman Erin Sandefur. Because Sandefur is an elected official, the parish does not have authority to conduct a further investigation into Sandefur’s actions, per Mickey McMorris, Livingston Parish chief financial officer.
After the parish’s investigation was finished, UWK reached out to Councilwoman Sandefur, who provided the following statement on Tuesday:
“I had deep concerns about Mr. Cascio’s involvement with Deer Run/Ascencion Properties. I requested the invoices to review and I shared them. There was no confidential information included, that I know of, and the account and routing numbers are disclosed every time the Parish makes a payment. If there was a mistake, it was a mistake by the administration and not by anyone else. If the information should have been redacted before I recieved it, who failed to do the do that and why?”
Cascio fired back to the councilwoman’s response:
I find Councilwoman Sandefur’s statement to be another lie, to cover up the corruption that Sherman Mack dragged her in. She claims to have “deep concerns” about my involvement with the Deer Run litigation three years after the fact. The truth is I never handled any part of that litigation. I never billed a single hour for that case and she knows that.
If this “deep concern” three years later were true, why share it with a candidate for District Attorney? It’s because Sherman did not want his name attached to a public records request.
Furthermore, the Livingston Parish Administration has no duty to redact the account information when sharing that information with the Ms. Sandefur, as she sits on the Finance Committee. It would need to be redacted only before being shared publicly.
If Erin Sandefur and Sherman Mack cannot see the issue with sharing this account information publicly, I’d like to see them share their checking account numbers and routing numbers publicly. It’s on their checks they pay people with.
Mr. Mack and Ms. Sandefur circumvented the proper procedure for political purposes. They just weren’t careful enough to get away with it this time.
When Parish President Delatte spoke to UWK on Sept. 28, he said he wants to ensure that this sort of situation doesn’t happen again and if the checks were leaked, that proper actions are taken.
“So, if we can find any wrongdoing, we have to turn that over to the DA’s office. But if we don’t find wrongdoing, the DA still has a responsibility to investigate who was involved in this, and if it was political with the staff or with the council or with anybody, there’s got to be consequences,” Delatte said. He added he promised transparency when he ran for office and plans to uphold that promise.
Since then, Perrilloux has now announced his office is moving forward with an investigation.
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