Md. man gets 70-year prison term in perjury and theft case
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Version 0 of 1. Moments before he sentenced Kenneth Adolphus Hinton in a lawsuit-fraud scheme, a Maryland judge on Thursday hinted at where he was he going: “You are a liar. You are a perjurer. You are a fraud.” Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Steven Salant was just warming up. He told Hinton, 51, how he had read court files that described Hinton as a habitual con artist. Among the examples: His getting out of student-loan payments — in one case, using a fictitious letter claiming he was a quadriplegic and in another sending one claiming he was dead and cremated. The documents spoke of stolen securities, settlement checks wrenched from large companies, and fraudulent claims for food stamps in Montgomery and the District. “You think you are the smartest one in the room,” Salant told the Silver Spring man, “and maybe your worst flaw is that you’re not.” And with that, the judge handed down a 70-year sentence — a stunning total in Maryland for crimes not involving violence. Salant acknowledged that he has had violent offenders before him who committed horrible, deadly offenses. But he said that Hinton’s schemes — both in the case he was sentenced for Thursday and those in the past — had a more extensive impact on the community. “You will deceive anyone,” Salant said. According to court records, that included oil giant BP. Hinton claimed he was a recreational angler and “maritime consultant of an Internet start-up seafood distribution enterprise” financially hurt by the Deepwater Horizon spill. In other schemes, the records show, Hinton used the identities of ex-wives, underage children and federal inmates in his court filings. He express-mailed many of his documents — 10:30 a.m. delivery — by illegally using a FedEx account owned by the National Institutes of Health, according to prosecutors. In all, Hinton has allegedly filed so many nuisance lawsuits in recent years — at least 100, by one count — that judges in Maryland and Virginia have signed orders trying to stop him. Salant, who presided over Hinton’s trial in August, said that the only way to stop Hinton from trying to defraud people, businesses and government agencies was to keep him behind bars. “In the justice system, we can deal with that,” Salant said. “The problem is, when you’re on the outside and when you’re taking advantage of people, you’re taking advantage of the community, and you can’t even admit that to yourself. You actually believe it. You believe some of the lies that you’re telling me. If you told me the sun was shining, I would have to go outside and look to verify it. I can’t believe a thing you say.” In seeking a long sentence, prosecutors also asked Salant to take into account Maryland rules that make nonviolent offenders eligible for parole consideration after serving one-fourth of their sentences — in this case, 17 1 /2 years. A full extent of Hinton’s fraud, county prosecutors said, couldn’t be determined. During the trial in August, they showed jurors a spreadsheet of Hinton’s $115,721 in income between January 2011 and July 2012. He had more than $7,000 in government food benefits and nearly $20,000 in unemployment benefits. The rest were deposits into five bank accounts. “A substantial percentage of that money was obtained by fraud,” said prosecutor Ray Pilkerton. In the August trial, Hinton was not convicted for the income streams. He was convicted because during the time he took in that money, he filed nine lawsuits in Montgomery and completed and signed forms saying he couldn’t pay the $135 filing fee per case. In total, he saved himself just more than $1,000. But those sworn claims of poverty were enough for a jury to find him guilty of 26 counts of perjury and one count of a theft scheme. “You probably are asking, why am I representing myself?” he had said to the jury before noting that he had a constitutional right to do so — and adding that he never committed perjury. On Thursday, Hinton told Salant that prosecutors’ recent filings were rife with errors — and that he was a victim of identity theft. “There’s a litany of information here that is inconsistent, inaccurate, erroneous,” he said. According to a Hinton’s online résumé, he has enjoyed a varied and interesting life. His skills: horseback riding, karate, fencing, scuba diving and stunt driving. He is listed as chief executive of the International Equine Enthusiast & Equestrian Entertainment Sports Association Inc., according to the group’s Web site and Dun & Bradstreet filings. And he also indicated that he has worked as an actor and in the film industry, including a stint as an extra on the Netflix series “House of Cards,” his résumé states. A native of Texas given to wearing cowboy boots, Hinton got into trouble in the District in 1997 and 1998 while working with a law firm and broke into the firm’s office 19 times, according to Montgomery prosecutors. He stole blank checks, used them to deposit money in financial institutions in Texas, Michigan and Massachusetts — and then drew funds to pay his mortgage, credit cards and utilities, according to Montgomery prosecutors. Hinton served time for the scheme but violated his release conditions, according to federal court records. In the Montgomery case, courthouse employees began seeing a pattern of nuisance lawsuits in which the plaintiff asked that court fees be waived. The Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office started an investigation, which led to the slate of perjury charges based on Hinton’s financial claims, according to prosecutors. During the trial, Hinton indicated that his employees had filled out the forms — and that he was taken to task for doing nothing more than perhaps signing an errant tax form filled out by an accountant. “I’m only human,” he told jurors, “and human beings make mistakes. And when you employ others to work on your behalf, they make mistakes.” Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report. |