By: Robin Ford Wallace, Reporter

Former Trenton City Commissioner Chuck Cannon, whose tenure on the commission was punctuated by arrests stemming from a seemingly tumultuous personal life, resigned from the commission in January, but he’s still making news:  He was booked Friday at the Dade County Jail pursuant to an arrest warrant from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for insurance fraud.

Capt. David Duvall of the Dade County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that the city’s former parks and recreation commissioner turned himself in on March 15 and bonded out immediately on a $3,000 bail set by Magistrate Joel McCormick.

Duvall said the fraud charge stemmed from a claim Cannon filed with Alfa Insurance attesting that his truck had been damaged in a hit-and-run incident at a Pilot Truck Stop on Aug. 29, 2012. The GBI investigation showed that Cannon’s son had actually wrecked the truck at another location, Duvall read from the warrant.

Duvall said he didn’t know if the GBI would routinely investigate an insurance claim by a city commissioner, but that in cases where an investigation of a city official was called for, the state agency rather than the sheriff’s department or city police would handle the matter to avoid conflicts of interest.

The GBI’s Greg Ramey, reached by telephone on Monday, would not comment on Alfa’s complaint against Cannon, or say whether this matter did or did not figure in any larger GBI investigation in Dade County, but confirmed that the purported hit-and-run had been looked into after qualms expressed by the insurance company. “At some point it was determined they felt like it was a fraudulent claim,” said Ramey. 

Assistant District Attorney Len Gregor of the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit, also reached by phone on Monday, said that insurance fraud of the kind charged is a felony offense punishable, as recommended by the applicable statute, by two to 10 years’ jail time, a fee of not more than $10,000, or both.

Gregor said there was no chance Cannon’s case would go to trial when Dade Superior holds its upcoming April session. “We don’t even have the warrant yet,” he said. “If this thing is going all the way to trial, it would have to wait until the October term.”

He explained that defendants often opt for plea arrangements rather than waiting for their day in court.

Cannon’s previous brushes with the law have been domestic: In August 2011 he was charged with simple battery after a fistfight with a friend; immediately after that, Cannon’s wife took out a restraining order against him, saying he’d hit her; and he was arrested the following December on a sexual battery charge in connection with his friend’s wife after a GBI investigation into the original fistfight incident.

The charges were mitigated in a subsequent grand jury session, and in August 2012 Cannon pled guilty to simple battery and obstruction of officers and was sentenced to a fine of $1,050 and 12 months’ probation. Additionally, he was forbidden to have further contact with his friend or the friend’s wife. 

Meanwhile, he and his own wife divorced. 

It was in connection with that divorce that Cannon in January announced he was quitting his place on the city commission. In his newfound bachelorhood he was leaving Dade County for a new life on the Tennessee side of the border, he told the Sentinel in January.

The Trenton City Commission just last week swore in Terry Powell to take Cannon’s unexpired term pending regular city elections this fall.