Racist Landlord Sentenced To 17 Years In Prison After Stealing Black Tenants Identities To Cash COVID Relief Benefits

Merryman owned over 60 properties and was convicted on wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and race-based interference with housing and employment

David Merryman, a 59-year-old Virginia man, has been sentenced to almost 20 years in prison for harassing Black tenants with racial slurs when they lived in his properties and stealing their identities to cash in and make requests for COVID relief funds.

Merryman has been sentenced to 17 years in prison on the charges of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and race-based interference with housing and employment for his behavior at over 60 different rental properties in the Newport and Hampton area.

According to prosecutors, Merryman “fraudulently obtained large initial payments in the form of security deposits, prepaid rent, and other fees for rental homes that were in poor repair” between 2019 and January of this year. After obtaining information about the tenants and stealing their payments, he would attempt to evict them quickly to get in new tenants to scam.

While his scheme ran during the pandemic, Merryman went as far as to forge the signatures of some of his tenants, all while threatening to evict them, when the federal and state governments systemically released relief funds for renters.

The properties Merryman targeted were intentionally located in low-income areas, focusing on poor Black tenants who were vulnerable to his schemes as they had nowhere else to live. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia reported that many of the homes were in abysmal condition and often had holes in the ceiling, leaks, and rodents or pests in the homes.

While committing fraud on several families, Merryman, who is white, also racially harassed his Black tenants and forced them to pay repeated and constructed security deposits under the pretense of making repairs that he never completed.

As reported by Law and Crime, in October 2022, Merryman rented a home that had no working stove or refrigerator to a Black man and charged an “initial deposit of $1,000 and a move-in deposit of $1,600 about two weeks later,” promising to fix it. He later ordered the tenant to pay over $1,000 at a later time, but when the tenant finally asked Merryman to come and make the promised repairs, the Virginian man said, “You people, man, it’s always the Black ones that got to have the problem moving in.”

In another recent incident, Merryman and several men walked onto a tenant’s property uninvited. When the renting tenant exited the home to confront the landlord, Merryman threatened them with a brick and potentially a firearm. During the incident, Merryman called the tenant a “Black motherf***** and a “f***ing n******” repeatedly.

U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Jessica Aber, stated in a press release, “David Merryman deliberately targeted families of color with limited means and housing options. Landlords have a responsibility under the law to uphold housing rights and protect the human dignity of the people to whom they rent. Mr. Merryman failed to uphold that responsibility and is paying a heavy price for his racial discrimination and fraud.”