Sir Maejor Page, a local activist convicted in April of federal wire fraud and money laundering charges, now faces more than seven years in prison when sentenced Oct. 3.
During a presentencing hearing Monday in U.S. District Court, Page’s attorneys argued against a raft of enhancements that would have pushed the top limit of any potential sentence from six months all the way up to nine years. Judge Jeffrey Helmick ruled against the defense on all but one of its motions, which knocked the maximum possible sentence down to 87 months.
In April, a jury found Page to have willfully misled donors to a Black Lives Matter group about its charitable status and where their money would go, convicting him of single counts of wire fraud and concealment of money laundering and two counts of money laundering.
The proceedings Monday were initially set as a sentencing date. But after reviewing a presentencing report, Page’s lawyers filed multiple motions against most of the enhancements, so Judge Helmick opted to use the time to hear their arguments.
Judge Helmick delayed the start of Monday’s proceedings until 10:30 a.m. because Page was 30 minutes late. According to his attorney, Charles Boss, Page is visually impaired and was delayed by transportation difficulties.
Once he arrived, Mr. Boss requested certain comments in his client’s presentence report be redacted. He specifically called out comments by Page’s 82-year-old mother, Twila — the details of which were not discussed in open court — and voiced Page’s concerns that her comments “would follow him to the bureau of prisons.”
Noting the investigator was not able to verify Ms. Page’s comments and having found no documentation at Lucas County juvenile court to support her statements, Judge Helmick agreed to have several sentences in the presentence report redacted.
With no enhancements, Page started with 7 points on the federal sentencing scale and would have faced no more than six months in prison. But with all possible enhancements, his resulting 29 points made him eligible for 87 to 108 months.
The biggest enhancement, crime with a loss more than $250,000 and less than $500,000, accounted for 12 of those points. The report listed victims’ losses from Page’s fraudulent activities at just over $490,000.
“This is not a conventional fraud case,” Mr. Boss said. “The gist of this case came down to the expenses” and what was legitimate and what was not.
In May, 2020, after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, Page’s Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta charity netted hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations through the organization’s Facebook fund-raising portal.
Page was the only signatory on the BLMGA Bank of America account, the same account that funded many of Page’s lavish purchases in 2020, including the purchase a house at 2057 Glenwood Ave. in Toledo.
“The house was the biggest purchase,” Mr. Boss said. “Across the country various BLM organizations … have established community houses to assist those in the community.”
The lawyer attributed “a number of Page’s boneheaded video clips” in which Page bragged about “my house” as the activist making braggadocio claims. According to Mr. Boss, the house truly “was owned by the charity to be used for charitable purposes.”
“He spent money willy-nilly,” Mr. Boss acknowledged, conceding “paying for the services of an escort — that’s a fraud.”
“Of the $490,000, let’s not lose sight of the fact most of that money was in the bank and seized, so it could be used for restitution,” Mr. Boss said.
Following Page’s conviction in April, a federal court judge granted a government request that the $263,318.37 seized from accounts controlled by Page be forfeited.
Assistant U.S. attorney Eugene Crawford countered Mr. Boss’ assertions, arguing “the crime here is getting money from people by lying.”
Mr. Crawford also argued there are no legal provisions that would allow seized funds to be used to cancel out or reduce the total loss.
Judge Helmick disagreed with the defense’s argument that the loss should have been in the range of $95,000 to $150,000, which would have cut the additional points from 12 to 8.
“Some of the expenditures may be laudable. It’s not that the house couldn’t be purchased and used for social activism,” Judge Helmick said. “But it doesn’t change its location, Toledo instead of Greater Atlanta.”
“It strikes me as a vanity project for Mr. Page,” the judge said. “This was a gross misrepresentation” of how the money would be used.
Judge Helmick also upheld additional two-point enhancements, one for there being more than 10 victims — there were as many as 18,000 donors — and another for acting on behalf of a charitable organization: the charity’s 501(c)(3) certification had lapsed before the donations started coming in.
The final enhancement the judge did allow was an allegation of obstructing official business, specifically that Page lied about when he had sought out professional assistance to rectify the filing status of his charity.
The judge disallowed an enhancement for possession of a dangerous weapon.
While the prosecution cited an assault rifle’s discovery at the Glenwood house’s front door during a search, Mr. Boss said online wire fraud “is not a confrontation crime” and Page had bought the weapons for his own protection. The judge found the evidence to support the enhancement was “too thin,” so he disallowed it.
But that ruling knocked just two points off Page’s sentencing score. The resulting 27 points translates into a sentencing range of between 70 and 87 months.
Page is scheduled for sentencing at 1:30 p.m. Oct. 3.
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