Columbia, South Carolina ---- United States Attorney W. Walter Wilkins stated that Tommy Charles Harrison, Jr., 42, of Orangeburg, pled guilty in federal court in Columbia to making a fraudulent statement on a Chapter 13 voluntary bankruptcy petition. United States District Judge Margaret B. Seymour accepted the plea and will sentence Harrison at a later date.

In May 2006 Harrison filed a Chapter 13 voluntary bankruptcy petition with the United States Bankruptcy Court in Columbia.  Harrison deliberately failed to list six previous Chapter 13 bankruptcy cases he had filed, and then certified the petition as true and accurate.  At that time, Harrison was also subject to an Order issued two months earlier by United States Bankruptcy Chief Judge John E. Waites prohibiting Harrison from refiling for bankruptcy relief in any district for three years.

The maximum penalty of imprisonment Harrison faces is five years in prison and a $250,000.00 fine.

The case was investigated by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne Hunter Young of the Columbia office is prosecuting the case.