A federal judge sentenced Sir Maejor Page, a local Black-rights activist convicted by a jury in April of federal wire fraud and money laundering charges, to 42 months in prison during a hearing Thursday afternoon.
Page had faced up to 87 months in prison after the jury found he willfully misled donors to an Atlanta-based Black Lives Matter group about the group’s charitable status and where its money was spent. The jury found Page guilty of single counts of wire fraud and concealing money laundering and two counts of money laundering.
But U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Helmick said the federal sentencing guidelines for Page’s convictions, especially an “enhancement” for the amount involved, were too strong for a situation in which no evidence was presented that Page’s charity started out as a fraudulent scheme.
There was “a lack of prior planning or false solicitation of donations,” the judge said.
A year-plus-a-day sentence defense lawyer Charles Boss suggested, however, was “simply insufficient” to meet the punishment and deterrence purposes of sentencing, Judge Helmick said.
Mr. Boss said outside the courthouse that an appeal, of which notice must be given within 14 days, is likely.
“At the end of the day, our community is better with Mr. Page in it, rather than in custody,” he said.
Page, who declined to comment after sentencing, needed well over a minute to compose himself before giving a long, halting statement to the court in which he admitted making “mistakes.”
“I never intended to deceive or take advantage of any donors who supported our cause and this movement,” Page said. “There were many nonprofit responsibilities I did not fully understand.”
The legal proceeding, he said, highlighted “the critical importance of transparency and accountability” in managing such an operation.
“I am deeply sorry. I apologize to those I may have misled,” Page said, “or who did not think I was fully transparent.”
“There was no evidence that I find compelling of any original intent to commit a fraud,” Judge Helmick later said.
There was, however, “an attempt to raise a profile for Mr. Page” that was “self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing,” the judge said, and once the improper use of funds began, Page “made efforts to cover that up.”
Among those in the gallery Thursday was Nathaniel Livingston, Jr., who said he knew Page and had participated in civil rights protests with him. Mr. Livingston said Page was being punished for his activism, not his conduct.
“What that judge just did, in a soft voice, sent a loud signal to Black people in Toledo that you can’t be an activist and raise money, or we will make you a slave,” Mr. Livingston said. “...This is a political decision to punish a person because they did not like what he stood for.”
Mr. Livingston compared Page’s sentence to four months that Steve Bannon, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump, is currently serving for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol.
Mr. Livingston implied that Bannon’s sentence was for fraud related to fund-raising for a wall along the United States-Mexico border. Trump pardoned Mr. Bannon for his role in the We Build the Wall charity’s activities shortly before leaving office, but Mr. Bannon still faces state charges in that matter and a trial is scheduled for December.
Money began flooding into the Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta’s donation portal on Facebook after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in May, 2020, even as the group’s registration as a charitable organization had lapsed because of its failure to file regulatory documents.
Federal prosecutors estimated donors’ losses at about $490,000, although more than half that amount, $264,318.37, was still in bank accounts that federal officials seized.
Page was the only signatory on a Bank of America account belonging to BLMGA that was used, among other things, to buy a house at 2057 Glenwood Ave. in Toledo. Page’s defense characterized the building as a “community house” for the group’s social-assistance functions, although Page also produced video clips, shown in court, in which he described the house as his own.
He also used BLMGA money to buy furnishings for the house, including electronic equipment, and firearms. And Mr. Boss conceded that Page’s hiring of an Atlanta prostitute with BLMGA money was fraudulent, while Eugene Crawford, an assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, also specifically mentioned “lavish furniture for his bedroom” and the guns as other examples of the donated funds’ misuse.
Judge Helmick affirmed the unspent funds’ forfeiture as part of his sentencing order.
Mr. Crawford said restitution could not be made to the estimated 18,000 donors because of the impossibility of verifiably identifying them through Facebook. Some may have had their donations paid back from Facebook through its insurance, the prosecutor said, in which case Facebook itself would now be eligible for reimbursement if that information were available.
The house on Glenwood was destroyed by fire after a federal lien was placed on it.
The judge also ordered Page to receive a mental-health assessment and substance-abuse testing while in prison and ordered him to abstain from alcohol. He allowed Page to remain free on bond pending his prison assignment, which he said should be “as close as possible to northwest Ohio.”
Page acknowledged during his statement to the court that he had been self-medicating with alcohol because of mental health issues that largely arose from an abusive childhood in the foster-care system and from being bullied for his albinism and resulting legal blindness.
First Published October 3, 2024, 7:06 p.m.
