S.C. Department of Transportation employees and contractors work on emergency repairs on Interstate 20 near the Wateree River in Kershaw County on Dec. 22, 2023. Two former employees were charged Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026, with allegedly taking thousands of dollars from state contractors. (File/Provided by SCDOT)
COLUMBIA — Two former state transportation employees are facing charges of taking kickbacks from contractors, the South Carolina attorney general’s office said Thursday.
In two separate incidents, James Murray Cooper and Curtis Sims Jr., each face charges of receiving thousands of dollars from contractors working with the state Department of Transportation, according to a news release from the state’s top prosecutor.
Sims’ punishment could be up to 26 years in prison and $11,500 in fines if convicted on charges of using his position for financial gain, receiving anything of value to influence the actions of a public official, and three counts of accepting rebates or extra compensation, according to the attorney general’s office.
Cooper faces up to six years in prison and $500 in fines for charges of using his official position for financial gain and accepting rebates or extra compensation.
Sims, who oversaw training safety and security for the agency’s Office of Public Transport, hasn’t worked for the department since October 2023, said agency spokeswoman Kelly Moore.
Cooper, a technical advisor and compliance manager for the Minority and Small Business Affairs Office, left in April 2025, she said.
SCDOT to remove rule about minority-owned businesses as part of regulation overhaul
Moore declined to give more information, including whether the employees were fired or quit. Cooper and Sims did not respond to voicemails left on phone numbers believed to belong to them.
How much money, exactly, the former employees were charged with receiving was unclear. The attorney general’s office also did not specify the companies the employees were charged with taking money from. A copy of the indictment was not immediately available, and a spokesman for the attorney general’s office declined to give more information.
“Today’s indictments send a message that all South Carolina businesses will compete for state contracts on equal grounds,” Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a statement.
Questions first arose in August 2023, when then-Secretary of Transportation Christy Hall requested an audit of the agency’s Office of Public Transit, which distributes state and federal funds to public transportation systems.
The findings of that audit led the agency to take a closer look at its Minority and Small Business Affairs Office, now called the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Office, in April 2024, after Secretary Justin Powell took the reins, Moore said.
“At SCDOT, we have zero tolerance for any employee taking advantage of the public’s trust,” Powell said in a statement. “As public servants, we are charged with being responsible stewards and operating beyond reproach. Anything less than that is completely unacceptable and will be dealt with accordingly.”
Following those agency audits, the department overhauled both offices, Moore said. That included putting more oversight in place and restructuring the management.
The Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Office’s work has been on pause since October, following a proposed change in federal regulation that would remove sections from the program that automatically consider businesses owned by women and people in racial minorities disadvantaged.
State officials are also looking to scrub the program from the Department of Transportation’s regulations. The move is unrelated to Thursday’s indictments but instead followed an executive order from Gov. Henry McMaster in December telling state agencies to stop signing contracts with companies based on the owner’s race.
The order essentially told transportation officials to ignore a 1995 state law requiring at least 5% of the agency’s money go to minority-owned businesses. That law applied only to contracts up to $250,000, which the agency rarely awards anyway, since construction projects are so costly, officials have said.
Rather than dealing with frequent changes in state and federal rules, officials decided in December to wipe the program from the agency’s regulations, deferring instead to state and federal law.
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
