[8] He advanced into a Democratic runoff primary with lawyer Ryan Hood and won, facing no challenge in the general election.
[12] That year he convinced the Mississippi State Legislature to grant some employees in the auditor's office's investigative division law enforcement powers.
While investigating Banks, the office of the Attorney General of Mississippi discovered that Patterson had used a forged letter to acquire a license plate for his car in 1995 to avoid paying back taxes on it.
[15] He claimed in the falsified letter that the car had not been operated on public roads between October 1993 and February 1995 (thus not being charged taxes for that time period), even though his wife had been involved in an accident while driving the vehicle in 1994.
[17] On October 10, 1996, he declared that he would resign effective November 1 and plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of filing a false affidavit to keep from paying county taxes through the purchase of a license plate.
The two also created Patterson, Balducci, & Biden PLLC in Washington D.C. and recruited additional partners but struggled to gain casework.
[22] In 2007, trial lawyer Richard Scruggs attempted to bribe a state circuit court judge to secure a favorable outcome in a ruling on the payment of legal fees.
The judge alerted the FBI, which launched an investigation and arrested Scruggs and several others involved in the case,[23] including Patterson and Balducci, who prosecutors accused of assisting in offering the bribe.
[25] Patterson pled guilty to a charge of conspiracy to bribe an elected official on January 15, 2008 and agreed to cooperate with authorities in exchange for a lighter sentence.