THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 26, 1996 TAG: 9604260503
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LYNN WALTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
A contractor who found 676 war bonds behind a dryer in the house of a deceased engineer and plotted to cash them was sentenced in federal court Thursday to 13 months in prison.
Leo Scott Reid, 34, was also sentenced for possession of marijuana. He will serve 13 months concurrently on that charge.
Reid pleaded guilty earlier this month to fraud in connection with the theft of the savings bonds, worth nearly $96,000, from the estate of Edgar M. Roylance.
Roylance started buying the $25 bonds, one or two a month, in 1942 and continued until about 1972. He kept them carefully bound in chronological order with rubber bands, then hid them in an old ammunitions box behind the dryer of his Norfolk home.
When Reid was hired to clean out the brick house at the corner of Surrey Crescent and Hampton Boulevard in preparation for an estate sale, he found the bonds. Reid then plotted with a federal inmate to sell the bonds, but the inmate turned him in to the FBI.
In a joint FBI and Secret Service sting, a federal agent posed as a crooked New Jersey lawyer and told Reid he would hire an elderly man to pose as Roylance to cash in the bonds.
Roylance was a retired civil engineer who had worked for the Army Corps of Engineers for nearly 45 years.
Reid was fooled by the sting until March 13 when federal agents knocked on his door. Reid realized what was happening when he recognized one of the agents as the would-be lawyer.
Reid was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Judge John A. MacKenzie and was fined $5,000. The sentence and fine were about half that suggested by court guidelines, because Reid had provided substantial assistance in a drug investigation, federal prosecutors told the judge.
KEYWORDS: GUILTY PLEA SENTENCING DRUGS ILLEGAL FRAUD by CNB