A federal judge on Monday sentenced a man to four years in prison for his role in a string of Walmart fires along the Gulf Coast in 2021.
U.S. District Judge Terry Moorer also ordered Michael Bottorff, 22, to be supervised by the U.S. Probation Office for three years after his arrest and to pay nearly $7.3 million for the damage caused to two stores in Mobile and two in Mississippi.
Defense attorney Fred Helmsing sought lenience, arguing that his client played a minimal role in the conspiracy. He suggested that his client was under the influence of Jeffery Sikes, the man who hatched the plan. “Sikes determined who did what, when they did it and how they did it,” Helmsing wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “The analysis of the conduct of the group must be viewed through the lens of Sikes’s dominance and control.”Bottorff moved with his parents and younger siblings to Lillian with Sikes and his family.
“The background facts of this case read more like a novel than a typical criminal indictment,” Helmsing wrote. “As with all such stories, at the heart of the saga is a villain. Here that villain is Jeffrey Sikes. Not only is Sikes the central character in the story, it is fair to say that the story would not exist at all without him.”Helmsing noted that his client was not present for any of the fires and mostly worked, often more than 40 hours a week, at a restaurant.
Bottorff’s father, Sean Bottorff, will be the last of the eight defendants to be sentenced. That hearing is scheduled for August.
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