Mayor Shirley Franklin's daughter sentenced to probation for minor role in cocaine ring

By Mara Shalhoup Monday March 17, 2008 10:22 PM EDT

GREENVILLE — Kai Franklin Graham apologized to her mother, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, during a brief sentencing hearing in Greenville federal court today, according to assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Moore.

Moore says the mayor sat in the courtroom during the proceedings — the same courtroom where, a year earlier, her ex-son-in-law was sentenced to life in federal prison on cocaine charges.

Franklin Graham received a sentence of three years probation for making "structured financial payments." In 2004, Franklin Graham received $14,000 cash from her then-husband — and federal fugitive — Tremayne Graham, a cocaine trafficker who was linked to the Black Mafia Family. She then converted the cash into postal money orders less than $2,000 each in an attempt to evade federal reporting requirements. (Any amount more than $2,000 must be reported to the feds). The money was used in part to pay the mortgage on the couple's $630,000 Marietta home.

Franklin Graham pleaded guilty to the federal charge in December, and she agreed to cooperate with the government in other investigations. During the April 2007 sentencing of Tremayne Graham, whom Franklin Graham divorced in 2005, Moore said he was interested in what she might know about Graham's alleged role in the 2004 murder of his co-defendant, Ulysses Hackett, and Hackett's 24-year-old girlfriend, Misty Carter.

"She might have very critical information about where he was and what he did on the night that Ulysses Hackett was killed," Moore said.

No one has been arrested in the killings, though Graham has been named a suspect.

Franklin Graham was cited as a potential witness in the trial of one of Graham's drug associates, Ernest Watkins. However, the trial was cut short last week, when Watkins pleaded guilty on the second day of testimony.

Editor's Note: This blog post has been updated to clarify that Kai Franklin Graham converted the cash into postal money orders to evade federal reporting requirements.