A former emergency management official will spend the next five years in prison after he pleaded guilty to swiping the personal information of hundreds of disaster victims to go on a six-figure shopping spree.
Robert Davis got 64 months in prison and was ordered to pay nearly $50,000 in restitution Friday. Davis pleaded guilty to wire fraud earlier this year, admitting that he took Social Security numbers and other personal details from the files of more than 200 people who had filed for disaster relief with FEMA between 2003 and 2007.
He used the information to open lines of credit with the Home Shopping Network, Ginny’s Inc., Shop NBC and QVC. He treated himself to jewelry, vacuum cleaners, steaks, lobsters and seafood, clothes, jackets, DVD players and other electronics. He pawned a lot of the swag for more than $24,000; the rest he kept, Davis admitted.
All told, businesses he scammed lost more than $156,000, Davis admitted.
Davis tried to apologize for his crimes Friday — saying he “had made a mistake” and was “extremely sorry” — but U.S. Judge Reggie Walton said he wasn’t impressed.
“Rather than trying to help these people, you hurt them even more,” Walton said. “That’s low down. It really is.”
Walton’s stiff sentence was a victory for prosecutor Tejpal Chawla, who said that Davis had also victimized his employer.
“In addition to the individual harm created to each of these direct victims, the defendant has caused serious harm to the public standing of the federal government, and FEMA in particular,” Chawla wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
