U.S. District Judge John Gibney in Norfolk, Virginia, sentenced Derickson Lawrence, a Mount Vernon activist found guilty of wire and mail fraud after a jury trial in March, to 7 1/3 years in federal prison on October 25, 2024. He was also ordered to pay $221,443 in compensation. The activists were found guilty of taking advantage of restaurant workers who depended on his company to pay them and of fictitiously claiming Covid relief funds.
According to his sentencing submission, Lawrence, 67, who had previously campaigned twice for Congress and placed last in a three-way Democratic primary for Mount Vernon comptroller in 2021, declared his intention to run for comptroller the day after the FBI searched his house as part of the fraud probe.
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In addition to leading Mount Vernon’s charter revision panel, which led to a successful referendum on stricter financial reporting standards, he served as the longtime leader of Westchester Crime Stoppers.
Both Inc., a Virginia Beach management firm for Golden Corral restaurants in Virginia and Maryland, was the main client of its payroll service business, MarketView Resources. Debit card-paid employees would obtain their money through MarketView following a transfer of funds from Both Inc.
Prosecutors claim that between March 2017 and October 2019, Lawrence transferred $230,000 from the bank account used for wages to his personal brokerage account and his romantic partner’s account, lost the majority of the payroll funds through risky options trading, and utilized the employees’ wages to pay for debit card expenses for himself, his single employee, and family members.
Following MarketView’s demise, Lawrence submitted payroll documents that were allegedly current but were really from 2016, defrauding the U.S. Small Business Administration of almost $26,000 in pandemic relief loans in 2020. By trading options, he additionally forfeited that money.
Lawrence might have received a sentence of up to 20 years in jail, but the prosecution’s stated guidelines recommended a sentence of 9 to 11 1/3 years. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Anthony Mozzi and E. Rebecca Gantt, who requested a 10-year prison sentence in a sentencing letter last month, called Lawrence “an educated community leader who used his position of trust to steal from the pockets of hardworking wage-earners.”
The prosecutor stated, “Defendant operated a years-long Ponzi scheme embedded inside his sophisticated pay card business structure, allowing his repeated thefts to go unnoticed until the money was completely gone.”
“Defendant further concealed his wrongdoing by channeling the funds through multiple accounts and, years later, when the FBI came knocking at his door, relied upon his sophisticated understanding of financial transactions to further obfuscate his crime by citing technical language in the contract which he asserted allowed him to engage in outright theft.”
Gibney rejected Lawrence’s attempt to have the conviction overturned, therefore he is appealing it.
Lawrence’s appeals to the sentencing guidelines were all dismissed, except for one. He claimed that the guidelines should have only stipulated a sentencing range of 4 to 10 months, and he requested a 6-month jail sentence.
Lawrence, who has a 14-year-old son and two daughters, expressed optimism that he would soon be able to return to his family and his consulting career.
He stated, “extreme remorse over the pain caused by his actions” to his family, friends, and community, but in particular for “the missed opportunity in the guidance and investment in my son’s character and overall development.”
