Saving My Marriage, Keeping My Word & the Crime

There are three things that matter most to me since I pled guilty. It is accepting responsibility, honoring my promises and protecting my marriage. I will explain all three, but my primary focus is saving my marriage. I am certain there are people who survived the criminal justice system, deemed rehabilitated and saved their relationships. I want to be one of those. First, a little bit about me and how I got here.

I grew up in a dysfunctional two parent home. My parents remained married throughout my childhood, but divorced shortly after I began college. My father was an abusive alcoholic, and I believe his disease destroyed his marriage and family. My father survived quadruple coronary bypass surgery, and ultimately died from heart failure when he was 67. My mother was a fulltime homemaker during my childhood, became a successful insurance agent after her divorce, and enjoyed a distinguished career.

I met my wife at college in 1988. It was a whirlwind romance, and I proposed to her two weeks later. We’ve been happily married for 29 years. We bought our first home after four years, and lived there almost twenty years. In 2012, her parents needed assisted living care, and we moved into their house to help. We’ve lived there ever since.

I started my first business in 2002, and have been involved in over 143 real estate ventures of various kinds. I had several long-term rentals, 116 luxury short-term rentals, held several private loans and ran a property management company when the pandemic started. The pandemic had a detrimental effect on my business. I wasn’t able to sell or rent my short-term rental contracts, forced to reduce rents in order to generate cash flow on my long-term rentals, and essentially worked without compensation in my property management business. I applied for disaster relief from the Small Business Administration (SBA) for each of my struggling businesses. I waited over two months not knowing which loans, if any, would be approved, but eventually, the SBA funded the majority of my loan applications.

I continued working closely with the SBA loan officers assigned to manage my loan portfolio. The SBA authorized a 12 month deferment before the first payment came due, and later extended the deferment an additional 12 months. I didn’t want to wait, and began repaying my loans 9 months later. I was ahead of schedule, and on the road to economic recovery, or so I thought.

The other shoe dropped when the government froze my bank accounts. I suspended my repayment plan to the SBA, retained counsel and negotiated a pre-indictment plea agreement. I stood before a judge and pled guilty to one count of wire fraud.

I have always believed a man should keep his word, be humble and allow his actions to speak for him. I made a promise to pay back the money I borrowed from the SBA. Somewhere along the way, the government lost faith in my promise and ability to repay. I had to ask myself one question, “Am I the type of man who will keep his promise?”

When I signed the loan documents with the SBA I certified that I would pay what I owe. The change in relationship from borrower to defendant in a criminal investigation didn’t change anything about my oath. I will concede the criminal justice system has corrupted much of what I believe about our legal system, but I refuse to allow the prosecutor to corrupt my word.

I agreed to pay several million in restitution to the court. I believe in the practice of recompense, it is both tangible and meaningful, and it affords a person the opportunity to demonstrate remorse and regret; and in my case, I believe paying back everything I owe before sentencing was the appropriate demonstration of recompense.

I permanently closed my business operations. It was my life’s work, and I thought it was worth saving. I relied on the SBA to help me through the economic catastrophe caused by the pandemic, and what a colossal mistake that decision turned out to be. I can always start over, but what good is it if I can’t keep my promises? Nobody would ever do business with me again. It’s going to be hard enough to start over as a felon. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be if I didn’t fulfill my obligations.

The three main take-aways from my criminal justice experience have been the acceptance of responsibility for my crime, honoring my word and protecting my marriage. I have already taken care of recompense for the crime, and I am confident any objective observer will agree that I kept my promise. The purpose of my blog is to hold myself accountable for a marriage I am desperate to protect at any cost.

To be clear, this blog post is not a boast about my resourcefulness. The pandemic debacle has cost me a life time of work, but I can rebuild. I am not asking for sympathy, and I do not expect pity. I will face the consequences. I am merely explaining the context surrounding the circumstances of my criminal conviction. If this blog finds its way into the hands of an underserved community of felons then I am happy, but my motive is selfish. I want to preserve my marriage, and this blog is about a man asking for help from a community of married felons. At the very least, my blog allows me to hold myself accountable as a married man, and I pray other felons are able to find value when reading about my experience with the criminal justice system. This blog remains a call to all the married felons who came before.