Michael Hild (BizSense file)
Michael Hild's bid to outrun his federal fraud conviction has officially come to an end.
The Richmond businessman, who for five years has sought to avoid going to prison for a bond pricing scheme that defrauded banks and caused the collapse of his Chesterfield mortgage company Live Well Financial, must begin his 44-month sentence on July 10.
That surrender date was issued Tuesday by U.S. District Court Judge Ronnie Abrams, who has presided over Hild's criminal case since he was first arrested and charged in 2019.
It's not yet clear where Hild will serve his time. He must first report to the U.S. Marshals Service, while the Federal Bureau of Prisons will determine which facility he'll be incarcerated in.
It's typical for a prisoner to be sent to a facility near their home. White-collar criminal defendants in Richmond are often sent to the minimum-security prison in Petersburg or Cumberland, Maryland.
Judge Abrams' surrender order ends Hild's long-running effort to remain a free man while trying to overturn a conviction that was handed down by a jury in 2021.
Hild was tried and found guilty on counts of bank, mail and securities fraud in a case that charged him and two other Live Well executives with intentionally inflating the value of reverse mortgage bonds that the company sold to investors and wrongfully used as collateral for tens of millions of dollars in loans from several large banks.
Live Well came crashing down in the summer of 2019, when those banks refused to continue to funnel the company money and forced it into bankruptcy. The lenders claimed they were lied to and loaned Live Well more money than they otherwise would have based on the actual value of the bonds.
Hild weeks later was charged civilly by the Securities and Exchange Commission and criminally by the U.S. Attorney's Office. He pleaded not guilty and put his fate in the hands of a jury. The other two Live Well executives charged in the scheme, CFO Eric Rohr and head bond trader Darren Stumberger, pleaded not guilty and were star witnesses at Hild's trial in the spring of 2021.
In the years since, Hild has sought to overturn the conviction, mainly by arguing that the attorney who represented him at trial was constitutionally ineffective. Hild made that argument before the U.S. District Court, U.S. Appeals Court and even the U.S. Supreme Court, only to be denied by each venue.
The Supreme Court denial was issued in April, leaving Hild with no other legal recourse to avoid beginning his sentence.
Federal prosecutors finally pressed Abrams to issue a surrender date, which she did on Tuesday.
This is breaking news. Stay tuned to BizSense tomorrow morning for more on this story.
