HAMPTON, Va. — Editor's Note: This story contains offensive language.
A Hampton landlord is facing a federal indictment for threatening African American tenants, and defrauding tenants and the government, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said Thursday.
David Merryman, 58, is charged with ten counts of wire fraud; four counts of interfering with housing rights; two counts of interstate communications with threats to injure; six counts of theft of government money; four counts of making false statements to the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and four counts of aggravated identity theft.
The DOJ said Merryman, who owns more than 60 rental properties in Hampton and Newport News, "repeatedly harassed his tenants with racist slurs, threats to kill or injure, and retaliatory eviction actions." He is also accused of assault and other threatening behavior towards tenants. According to the documents, Merryman rented primarily to low-income African Americans, some susceptible to homelessness.
"The alleged threats and racial harassment were often highly graphic and included references to slavery and mocking comments about the Black Lives Matter movement," the DOJ wrote in a news release.
His victims include a businessman, a Newport News city official, and four tenants, according to the department.
The 51-page indictment outlines the alleged racist and threatening comments to tenants.
13News Now spoke to Joseph Robertson back in 2021 who lived in one of Merryman’s homes when Former Attorney General Mark Herring filed a lawsuit against the landlord. Robertson claimed Merryman repeatedly called him the N-word and harassed him.
"Different threats, different racial slurs, one thing after another you know, always something with him," said Robertson.
Something the federal prosecutors allege is a pattern.
Prosecutors say Merryman hit a tenant in the face with a shovel and attacked another with the blade of a chainsaw while it was off.
The documents say "Merryman became enraged and swung a lawnmower at [redacted]. Merryman then picked up a shovel, and while calling [redacted] a n*****, hit [redacted] in the face with the shovel."
He also allegedly threatened to hit a tenant with a tire iron and a wrench on two separate occasions.
The indictment goes on to allege he told one tenant to “Clean the house like when you were slaves.”
Merryman also allegedly refused to fix an air conditioner saying, “Y’all should be used to that… you’re black. You can take the heat a little bit.”
Even threatening to kill some of them, according to prosecutors. Merryman allegedly told one man “watch your back, n*****, because I’m going to kill your n***** a**.”
The DOJ also said Merryman is accused of defrauding tenants and the government to obtain rent relief benefits, housing assistance payments for public housing, and other funds.
The indictment says from around 2015, Merryman defrauded his tenants out of money by renting run-down homes and making false promises to fix the problems. Problems like rotten floors, leaking sewage, rat, and bug infestations.
"When [redacted] moved in, raw sewage was leaking into the home, light fixtures were broken, the tile in the bathroom was cracked, the house was infested with rodents, and the floor was rotting so badly that it caused [redacted] to call through the floor into the crawl space and injure himself."
The document also alleges Merryman forged his tenants’ signatures and lied about the state of the homes to receive rent relief and housing assistance benefits that he was not entitled to.
Prosecutors say he obtained a significant sum of rent relief without telling the tenants, all while evicting them for unpaid rent.
This isn't Merryman's first controversy. In May 2022, U.S. Marshals arrested him for allegedly failing to pay his employees of his landscaping company thousands of dollars. In October of 2021, the Virginia Attorney General's Office sued Merryman for systemic housing discrimination, alleging “horrific treatment” of tenants.
Online court records show the lawsuit against Merryman will go to trial in the Newport News Circuit Court on Feb. 26.