RICHMOND — Former Delegate Fenton Bland was sentenced yesterday to 57 months in federal prison and ordered to repay $1.2 million for conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
Bland, a Petersburg Democrat, resigned from the House of Delegates seat he had held since 2002 after pleading guilty in January.
U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson rejected Bland’s appeal for a reduced sentence.
Bland’s wife, Elizabeth, is institutionalized at Central State Hospital, and Bland said his incarceration would leave their young children with no one to care for them.
“Judge, I ask for mercy. Please have leniency on me,” Bland said haltingly.
But Judge Hudson had little patience for his appeal, noting that Bland defrauded a nursing home patient of property.
“You used your education and business skills to bilk an elderly man out of almost $100,000,” Judge Hudson said during sentencing. “You held his hand while he signed a conveyance with a bank, honored because it respected you as a public official.”
Bland pleaded guilty Jan. 26 to misrepresenting his personal and business interests in various real estate properties to secure loans and lines of credit from two banks.
The properties belonged to a friend of the delegate named Philip Bland, who is not related, said U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty. The older man was “incapable of understanding his rights” when he fell prey to Bland’s scheme, Mr. McNulty said.
Beginning in 1996, the delegate forged signatures to take control of several of Philip Bland’s properties in Petersburg and Ettrick, Mr. McNulty said.
He then claimed he was the owner of the properties to secure $460,000 in credit with the banks, according to court papers.
In August, FBI agents and Virginia State Police investigators searched Bland’s two homes and his business at the time, the financially troubled A.D. Price Funeral Home. He has since sold the business.
Bland’s seat was empty for nearly all of this year’s General Assembly.
Former Petersburg Mayor Rosalyn Dance, also a Democrat, was elected to his seat March 22, after the legislative session’s end.
In the summer of 2002, four Petersburg voters sought to have Bland unseated by arguing in court that he did not live within his district, as legislators are required.
The petitioners argued that Bland said he lived at the home of his parents in Petersburg, within the district, but actually lived with his wife and children in his home in Prince George County, which is in the adjacent 80th District.
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