Last names have many origins that can easily be grouped into four categories. Locative names, patronymic names, occupational names and characteristic names. Merryman connotates someone of a merry personality. Yet David Merryman was anything but merry. Merryman owned over fifty rental properties that were in poor condition and located in low-income neighborhoods. He primarily rented the properties to underprivileged African American tenants with limited credit and housing options. They were people who had little options. All the better for Merryman to victimize.
From 2019 through at least January 2024, Merryman engaged in a multifaceted scheme that included obtaining federal rent relief benefits to which he was not entitled to although his renters were. During the COVID-19 pandemic, state and federal governments made rent relief benefits available to those struggling during the national health crisis. Merryman filed fraudulent rent relief applications and used his tenants’ names and personal information without their consent and forged their signatures. He obtained significant sums of rent relief without telling the tenants. He would still evict the very same tenants for unpaid rent so that he could fraudulently apply for benefits with new tenants. To obtain housing-assistance payments from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Merryman also made false representations about the condition of his rental properties and whether he was receiving other payments that would be duplicative of federally funded rental assistance.
Most unforgiveable of all his crimes, Merryman harassed his minority tenants with slurs, comments about slavery, mocking comments, death threats, and other assaultive conduct related to their race, all in violation of their right to occupy and lease a dwelling free from racially motivated harassment, threats, and force. Evilman. Cruelman. Definitely a Fraudman. He is no Merryman.
One July 31, 2024, Merryman pleaded guilty. If it was a crime to be mean, Merryman would get sentenced to life in prison. But for these crimes, he is facing 20 years.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “Landlord accused of racial threats, stealing identities pleads guilty to 4 counts in wide-ranging case” published by The Virginia Pilot on August 1, 2024.
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.
