NORFOLK — A Peninsula landlord hit earlier this year with numerous federal housing fraud and racial discrimination charges pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Norfolk.
David Lee Merryman, 59 — who owns more than 60 residential properties in Newport News and Hampton — was charged in January in a wide-ranging indictment that many tenants say stemmed from years of abuses.
Among other things, federal prosecutors accused Merryman of using race-based taunts against Black residents as he threatened them with eviction — sometimes threatening to kill them in the process, the indictment asserted.
Merryman was also accused of forging applications for pandemic-related housing assistance grants, illegally obtaining more than $77,000.
On Wednesday, Merryman pleaded guilty to four of the 31 felony charges he faced — one count each of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, race-based interference with housing and race-based interference with employment.
Merryman faces up to 24 years in prison when Senior U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson sentences him in December, though federal prosecutors have agreed to ask for no more than 14 years under the terms of the plea agreement.
The 27 other charges will be dismissed as part of the deal.
According to a statement of facts that prosecutors, Merryman and his attorney signed off on as part of the plea bargain, Merryman “created a scheme” to obtain money through false applications for federal pandemic relief money.
The statement said Merryman would use the names of tenants to fill out the applications without their consent — creating false leasing documents, backdating them, forging signatures and lying about monthly rental rates.
Merryman “used the money for himself,” giving a cut to “his aiders and abettors,” and later often “evicted the same tenants for purportedly unpaid rent,” the statement of facts added.
Even after getting the rental relief money, the statement said, Merryman “would engage in racist and discriminatory harassment of tenants and would otherwise pressure tenants to leave the properties.”
In April 2018, the statement said, a Black couple rented one of Merryman’s homes on 30th Street in Newport News. Sewage leaked into the home, light fixtures were broken, the floor was rotted and the house was infested with rodents.
Though Merryman promised to repair the property, the statement of facts said, he refused to do so after they moved in. “You fix it yourself,” he told one of the tenants. “Get off your butt and go to work and get a job,” then called him a racial epithet.
When the sewage backed up in the home, Merryman told the tenant he would beat his “black (expletive)” if he had to come over to make the repair, the statement of facts said.
Though the tenants paid monthly rent, the statement said, Merryman collected $12,000 in federal rental relief benefits in the name of one of them.
In that application process, the statement said, Merryman sent the government a fake letter purporting to show that one of the tenants had been laid off from a fictitious job at Outback Steakhouse.
“We regretfully inform you,” the faked letter began, “due to slower than usual business sales, we and most dining establishments will need to lay off wait staff until more business picks up.”
The tenant never worked at the restaurant, the statement said.
In another case cited in the statement of facts, a Black tenant moved into one of Merryman’s homes on 41st Street in Newport News in the summer of 2019. At the time, the property had no stove, the refrigerator had no door and the home was infested with roaches and rodents.
When the woman “made reasonable requests” to Merryman to fix the property, he called her a racial epithet, saying such tenants “are always looking for something for nothing.”
“I have 23 people still owe me rent money from September, and Guess what!!!!” Merryman told her in a written message. “They are all black!”
In April 2019, when the woman kept making requests, Merryman threated to turn her and her kids into “potting soil,” the statement of facts said.
That tenant got a protective order against Merryman, the statement said, but he parked his vehicle just outside the order’s radius and “stared” at the woman and her family in an attempt to intimidate them.
In a third case cited in the statement, a Black woman rented a home from Merryman on 31st Street in Newport News, beginning in 2015. She was evicted in August 2021 after a medical issue during the pandemic caused her to lose her job.
“While (the tenant) was hospitalized or soon thereafter, Merryman sent a crew to remove all her belongings from her home and had her car towed,” the statement of facts said. The tenant “lost all her belongings in the house.”
But before kicking the woman out, Merryman and other conspirators collected more than $15,000 in pandemic relief funds in her name, using a false rental agreement and forging the woman’s signature. (The statement said Merryman maintains that he didn’t have “direct knowledge” of that scheme in this instance).
When the pipes backed up in the woman’s house, Merryman told her it was “probably her weave,” referring to her hair extensions. Then he told her to “clean the house like when you were slaves,” the statement of facts added.
The statement also delves into Merryman’s treatment of a Black man who owned a Hampton concrete business.
When Merryman failed to finish a job of building a new driveway, the statement said, the homeowner hired the concrete business owner to finish it. That’s when Merryman called the man on the phone.
“You stole my job, (racial epithet),” Merryman told the man, according to the statement of facts. “I’m going to take you to court for stealing my job, (racial epithet). I will kill your (racial epithet and expletive).”
The man obtained a protective order against Merryman, but the landlor came to a different job site and stared at him, the statement said. That man didn’t bid on jobs Merryman was involved in because of the threats, interfering with his employment rights.
Merryman has been held at the Western Tidewater Regional Jail since his January arrest, and is expected to remain in custody there pending the December sentencing.
His attorney, Andrew Sacks, said he will ask for a much lower sentence than the 14-year promised cap on the prosecution’s request. Sacks said he will prepare a “vigorous sentencing presentation” on Merryman’s behalf that will include extensive mitigating evidence.
“We believe the law and the evidence will justify a much lower sentence, and we look forward to our opportunity to present that,” Sacks said in an interview.
Yugonda Sample-Jones, a community activist who has kept track over the years of Merryman’s treatment of his tenants, said the guilty pleas were a long time coming.
“Karma is a beautiful thing,” she said.
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
