Developer Gets Prison for Theft From Buyers

A District Heights developer was sentenced Monday to 12 years in prison for collecting more than $1 million from banks and home buyers for houses that were never built.

Leon Coleman promised 11 buyers that he would build homes in Kings Grant, a new subdivision in Upper Marlboro, but he never built them. Instead, prosecutors said, Coleman pocketed $206,000 and used some of the rest of the money to buy land and pay closing costs.

"I have to send a message to the development community," Prince George's Circuit Court Judge Leo E. Green Jr. said as he handed down the sentence. "You have to be respectable in how you deal with people and their dreams."

Coleman was convicted of 16 counts of theft and other violations in June.

Kings Grant was supposed to be Coleman's first home-building project. Coleman said Monday that he had "intentions of doing this development."

"My goal was not to hurt anybody, not to deceive anybody. My goal was to build a development. That was my dream," he said.

In 2005, the Maryland attorney general's office won a civil lawsuit against Coleman and his wife, Emma, who were ordered to pay about $500,000 in fines and to repay about $1 million of the money they obtained. The Colemans never complied. The Prince George's County state's attorney's office pursued the case as a criminal matter after being contacted by the home buyers.

Would-be buyer Glenn Miller said his savings are depleted, his credit score has plummeted and his dream of sending his daughter to college has nearly evaporated.

"I had $60,000 in savings. Now I have nothing," said Miller, a single parent, crying as he talked in court about the impact the incident has had on his and his daughter's lives. "I feel like my life is over."

Ranah Harris Johnson, another buyer, said she believes that the stress caused her to miscarry one of her twins. Another buyer, Jennifer Lewis-Gooden, said "a very fragile marriage fell apart" in part because of the couple's financial turmoil.

Like many of the sites in the undeveloped subdivision, Lewis-Gooden's property is in foreclosure.

Green said he believes Coleman was trying to live the American dream with the project, but he destroyed the dreams of nearly a dozen home buyers in the process. "You had an opportunity to say 'Stop, I made a mistake,' " Green said.