Federal Prison

A 39-year-old Baltimore woman was sentenced to more than two years in federal prison Friday for bank fraud and identity theft, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office announced. Phyllis Wilson used her positions working at four assisted living facilities in the Baltimore area to steal identifying information from residents and colleagues — including check books and social security numbers — then bought cell phones, clothes and technology services with it, according to prosecutors.

As a federal judge handed down a sentence that will virtually ensure Perry Roark spends the rest of his life behind bars, the founder of Maryland's largest home-grown prison gang renounced his association with the group. Roark, a hulking man known as "Rock," was sentenced to life in a prison Monday for his role in creating Dead Man Inc., an organization of white inmates that prosecutors said has since spread to other states and led to street violence throughout the Baltimore region.

Three people - two from Howard County and another from Virginia - have been sentenced to federal prison and ordered to pay back tens of thousands of dollars for their involvement in a real estate investment scheme involving at least 200 properties in Baltimore. The case is part of a crackdown by federal prosecutors on the practice of flipping, in which houses are bought and then quickly resold at inflated prices. The deals are done with false appraisals and paperwork, and the houses are often uninhabitable.

We've all seen it on TV: A criminal is convicted and immediately led out of the courtroom, usually in handcuffs, and on to prison. That's the way the justice system works, right? Not always. When it comes to white-collar crime, federal judges and even prosecutors can seem a little soft on sentencing and detention, allowing convicted criminals relatively liberal latitude in when they begin serving time. In some cases, it can take months before a criminal is made to report for prison.

Former state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell, who pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge last year, reported to a federal prison yesterday to begin serving a seven-year sentence, according to a Bureau of Prisons spokesman. Bromwell, a Democrat, arrived about 2 p.m. at Devens Federal Medical Center in north-central Massachusetts. It is a decommissioned military base that houses male inmates who require specialized or long-term medical care, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons Web site.

CUMBERLAND -- Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett said that a federal prison under construction near Cumberland likely will not be affected by proposed cuts in the Justice Department's budget next year.Cuts in the federal Bureau of Prison's funding for preparing new prisons for inmates are expected to delay the opening of some prisons.But bureau officials assured the 6th District Republican that the $1.2 million slotted for Cumberland will be available on time."It's a go at this point," Mr. Bartlett said.

Disgraced collector Barry H. Landau was sentenced Wednesday to seven years in federal prison for stealing thousands of historic documents worth as much as $2.5 million from archives along the East Coast, including one in Baltimore, where the scheme unraveled last summer. The 64-year-old Manhattan resident, who for years fooled celebrities and political players into believing he had significant ties to the White House, was also ordered to pay $46,525 in restitution and to stay away from all archives and libraries after he is released.

WASHINGTON - In an unusual midsummer order, the Supreme Court said yesterday that it would seek to rule quickly on whether thousands of federal prison sentences were unconstitutional because a judge, not the jury, had decided key facts that called for more time behind bars. The federal criminal courts were thrown into "disarray" by a high court ruling in late June that cast doubt on the traditional way of imposing punishment, Bush administration lawyers complained in an emergency appeal.

The case of a Baltimore drug lord who ordered executions from federal prison is a prime example of how inmates have run deadly criminal enterprises with unfettered access to telephones, a government inquiry has concluded.The Inspector General's Office, an investigative arm of the U.S. Justice Department, accused the Bureau of Prisons of "taking insufficient steps to address this abuse" despite being aware of widespread problems for years."A significant number of federal inmates use prison telephones to commit serious crimes while incarcerated, including murder, drug trafficking and fraud," Inspector General Michael R. Bromwich concluded.

The Virginia prosecutors of snipers Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad say they oppose allowing Malvo to serve his life sentence in a federal prison as part of any far-reaching plea agreement, as has been suggested in recent months. Muhammad, 45, on death row in Virginia for a sniper murder, was convicted in May of six fatal sniper shootings in Montgomery County in 2002. He received six life terms without parole. Malvo, 21, serving multiple life sentences for Virginia sniper shootings, had not spoken publicly about the crimes until Muhammad's trial.