Ware

Matthew Ware, a Lithonia accountant and former Athens city councilman, recently started serving a six-year prison sentence for laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars for cocaine traffickers.

The AJC has the full story behind its paywall, but here's a portion:

Matthew Ware, who just turned 58, was a talented basketball player at Fisk University, good enough to play professionally in Europe, said his wife, attorney E. Noreen Banks-Ware. When he settled in DeKalb he coached AAU teams, continuing even after his son moved on to high school.

Ware opened his accounting firm in 1991, around the time he moved from Athens, where he was a one-term city councilman. He caught his future wife’s eye while serving as campaign chairman for Michael Thurmond’s bid for a state House seat.

“He was tall and handsome. That’s the first thing I noticed about him,” said Banks-Ware, eight years his junior and still a student at the University of Georgia when they met in the early 1980s.

As she got to know him she was struck by Ware’s earnestness.