A Virginia landlord who owned more than 60 properties, many of which were in poor condition, was sentenced to nearly two decades in prison on Dec. 18 for defrauding the government and committing years of racial abuse against African-American tenants.
A federal judge sentenced David Merryman to 17 years in prison for orchestrating a fraud scheme from 2019 to 2024 in which he received rent relief benefits that he wasn’t entitled to and fraudulently obtained large payments for security deposits, prepaid rent, and other fees for homes in disrepair and in low-income neighborhoods.
The 59-year-old’s prison term exceeds the sentence federal prosecutors sought by three years. Prosecutors initially recommended no more than 14 years after making a plea bargain with Merryman in July, but the judge reportedly had the discretion to sentence Merryman to up to 24 years.
Defense attorney Andrew Sacks requested that Merryman only serve six years, calling a 14-year sentence “extremely excessive.”
According to a federal indictment, Merryman owned 39 rental properties in Newport News and 23 more in Hampton.
While leasing his properties out to prospective tenants, he purposely targeted Black tenants with limited credit and housing options. Investigators said he would convince them to rent by offering longer tenancy terms and then work to evict them as quickly as possible to restart the cycle of fraud and collect higher initial payments from new tenants.
Investigators learned that Merryman harassed his minority tenants on several occasions with racial slurs, denigrating comments about slavery, death threats, and assaultive, racially charged conduct, which violated their right to occupy and lease a dwelling free from racial harassment, threats, and force.
Prosecutors argued that Merryman intentionally used insulting, racist rhetoric to motivate more tenants to end their leases, increase turnover, and collect more money.
According to the indictment, some witnesses also reported that some of Merryman’s properties had rotting floors, rodent infestations, and improper plumbing, which led to sewage leaks inside the homes.
“One that stands out to me in particular, maybe one of the first tenants interviews inside a Merryman property, this woman had to walk their children down the street because the house she was renting did not have a functioning toilet,” former FBI agent Ted Rose told 13News Now.
Merryman also fabricated lease documents, often with incorrect information related to the tenants, and backdated documents before forging tenants’ signatures and falsely representing that he was authorized to act on their behalf.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, state and federal governments established rent relief benefits for people struggling during the crisis. Merryman forged his tenants’ signatures and used their personal information without their consent to file fraudulent applications for these pandemic-era rent relief benefits. In many cases, he obtained significant sums of rent relief without telling the tenants, then evicted or tried to evict those same tenants for unpaid rent.
“He is someone who is manipulative,” Yugonda Sample-Jones, a former tenant of Merryman’s, told 13News Now. “He likes to get over on people.”
Before being sentenced, Merryman read off an apology to tenants and city employees in Newport News, Virginia, who were impacted by his schemes for years. He said he was “very sorry” and “truly humbled” by his actions.
At the end of the three-hour sentencing hearing, the judge told Merryman that he “engaged in some heinous conduct,” adding that he used his power as a landlord over tenants “who had nothing.”
“You did it to Black tenants,” Senior U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson said, according to The Virginian-Pilot. “Poor, poverty-stricken, needing some place to live … You have firearms, threatened people with firearms, hit people with shovels.”
According to the indictment, Merryman once attributed a clogged sink to a woman’s hair extensions. He once told another tenant to “clean the house like you were slaves” and threatened to turn an African-American woman’s children into “potting soil.”
In properties without working air conditioners, he told tenants that they “should be used to that … you’re Black. You can take the heat a little bit.”
In another instance, a tenant moved into one of his properties with a rotting floor, leaking sewage, and rodents. Though he told the tenant the property was repaired, he later refused to make repairs, stating, “You fix it yourself. Get off your butt and got to work and get a job you black n*****.”
One investigator learned that Merryman even told a tenant that “her stillborn baby was karma for not paying rent.”
Newport News Director of Codes Compliance Harold Lee Roach Jr. said that in his 25-year tenure with the city, Merryman “is the worst landlord I’ve experienced” and called him “a public nuisance” during the sentencing hearing.
Merryman was sentenced to 15 years for wire fraud and two years for identity theft. He’ll also serve two years concurrently with the 17-year sentence for the racial discrimination charges he faced.
