A 59-year-old Virginia man was sentenced to nearly two decades in prison for harassing Black tenants with racial slurs and stealing their identities to obtain COVID relief funds.
David L. Merryman, who owned more than 60 rental properties in Newport News and Hampton, will spend the next 17 years in prison for wire fraud , aggravated identity theft , and race-based interference with housing and employment.
The properties were mostly located in low income areas and he primarily rented to poor Black tenants who had nowhere else to live, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a press release . The homes were in awful condition with holes in the ceilings and walls, leaks and rodent activity, among other issues, according to prosecutors.
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Merryman, who is white, also harassed his tenants and hurled racial insults at them while defrauding them by forcing them to pay repeated security deposits. He took the money but never made the necessary repairs.