Ex-Greene deputy gets another year

By Tasha Kates

Published: June 5, 2008

STANARDSVILLE — At noon on June 13, former Greene County deputy Leftery N. “Terry” Tsouroutis will check himself in to the low-security federal prison at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida.

Not only will Tsouroutis be serving a 27-month federal prison sentence for violating the federal Mann Act and for making false statements to FBI agents, but he also will serve a concurrent one-year sentence for selling a firearm to a convicted felon.

Tsouroutis, 39, was sentenced Wednesday to a five-year prison sentence with four years suspended for the firearm charge, which he received for illegally giving a 9mm pistol to someone as partial payment for work on his Jeep. He also was sentenced to two years of probation and 200 hours of community service, the latter of which Circuit Judge John R. Cullen said was an attempt to pay the community back for his breach of the public’s trust in law enforcement.

The former lieutenant said he is sorry for what he did.

“I know my punishment is coming and I have to do it,” Tsouroutis said Wednesday in Greene Circuit Court. “I am going to make the best of it and turn my life around.”

George S. Webb III, Madison’s commonwealth’s attorney, was a special prosecutor in the case. Although Tsouroutis expressed remorse in court, Webb said a probation officer’s report showed he didn’t accept responsibility for what he had done. Webb recommended a similar sentence to what Tsouroutis received, except the year in prison would be served consecutively to his federal sentence.

“Those that enforce the law are not above the law,” Webb said in court.

Tsouroutis’s life today is much different than it was several years ago. In the summer of 2002, police were alerted to a homemade sex tape featuring Tsouroutis and a 19-year-old drug informant. In February 2002, Tsouroutis had driven to Baltimore with another officer to pick up a female prisoner. Police said he later told her he would “take care of her charges” if she had sex with him, which she did for money for over three months.

But for the last five years, Tsouroutis has led a new life in Northern Virginia working in the heating and air conditioning business. He remarried in 2004, recently had a baby with his wife and has joint custody of his firstborn.

His second and current wife, Kelly Tsouroutis, met him when she worked at the Greene Sheriff’s Office. She testified Wednesday that she knew he had gone through a bad period in his personal life, but their time together has been positive.

“Since 2003, everything has been so great as far as I’m concerned,” Kelly Tsouroutis said in court. “We have hobbies, a family.”

Defense attorney Lloyd Snook said Terry Tsouroutis’s case was unusual because the state gun charge was levied after federal prosecutors had discussed making it part of the federal case. The charge also happened in the same jurisdiction and time period as the federal case.

The attorney requested that his sentence be served concurrently, in part because he wouldn’t get any more rehabilitation from a state facility after about two years in a federal penitentiary.

“I think it’s fair to say that Terry Tsouroutis is going to keep his nose very clean from here on out,” Snook said.

Terry Tsouroutis remains free on bond.