‘Serial fraudster’ paid homeless with heroin and hotels in phony check scheme, feds say
Gary Darnell Williams recently had finished serving a 10-year sentence for fraud when prosecutors say he masterminded a new scheme involving stolen mail, counterfeit checks and homeless people.
Now the 52-year-old is headed back to prison.
A federal judge sentenced Williams to more than eight years behind bars on charges of mail and bank fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced Thursday in a news release. He pleaded guilty to the charges in August, court filings show.
Williams was arrested in 2010 for his role in a counterfeit check scam that spanned half the East Coast — from Pennsylvania to South Carolina, according to court filings. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prison with five years of supervised release and ordered to pay nearly $100,000 in restitution.
Just after Christmas in 2018, public records show Williams was released early from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. But prosecutors say it took only four months for the “serial fraudster” to fall back into old habits.
According to court filings, Williams began stealing business checks in May 2019 that were sent to addresses in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Pennsylvania to draft counterfeit checks linked to the same business accounts.
“He then recruited at least eight homeless individuals to cash at least 66 counterfeit checks totaling over $57,000 at financial institutions in Virginia and Pennsylvania,” prosecutors said. “To recruit and retain these people, Williams rented them hotel rooms and supplied them with heroin.”
The alleged scheme lasted six months — all under the nose of his federal probation officer.
During that time, prosecutors said Williams “absconded from (court) supervision” and became a fugitive from justice. The local sheriff’s office in New Hanover County, Virginia, arrested him on Oct. 15, 2019, according to court filings.
Williams was discovered driving a black Lexus with two homeless people as passengers, both of whom were wanted for cashing counterfeit checks, court filings state. A photograph of one of the individuals in the car had been circulated among area banks, and a teller reportedly recognized him getting into the Lexus earlier that day.
Law enforcement found 30 counterfeit checks totaling more than $26,000 in Williams’ car during the arrest, prosecutors said.
Williams has been in custody since his arrest last year, defense attorneys said in court filings. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and bank fraud on Aug. 3.
Prosecutors had pushed for a sentence of at least seven years given his criminal record.
Over three decades, they said Williams has been arrested 37 times and convicted of 27 offenses in 17 different cases — many of which involved allegations of theft and fraud.
“Put simply, defendant is a recidivist who has repeatedly returned to the same criminal conduct, even after serving significant sentences,” prosecutors said in a sentencing request. “His criminal history demonstrates a persistent lack of respect for the law, one that is not adequately reflected in his current guideline range.”
Defense attorneys for Williams asked for a sentence of four to six years in prison, pointing to his willingness to accept responsibility, trouble coping with life outside of prison and substance abuse issues.
Williams also sent a letter to the court apologizing in which he asked for drug treatment and counseling at a halfway house after his release.
“It was the real pressures of life I couldn’t handle,” he wrote of being released from prison in 2018 without a home or immediate family. “That made it easy for that cancerous lifestyle of drugs, alcohol and crime to find me. I’ve been battling this disease for over 40 years and never had any real drug treatment.”
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne sided with prosecutors’ push for a harsher penalty and sentenced Williams to 100 months in federal prison followed by five years of supervised release.
He’s also been ordered to pay $46,320 in restitution, court filings show.
This story was originally published November 13, 2020 at 12:49 PM with the headline "‘Serial fraudster’ paid homeless with heroin and hotels in phony check scheme, feds say."
