Ex-top prosecutor for Baltimore to be sentenced for mortgage fraud and perjury convictions

FILE - Maryland State Attorney for Baltimore City Marilyn Mosby speaks during a news conference, Oct. 11, 2022, in Baltimore. Sentencing for the former Baltimore state's attorney is set to open Thursday, May 23, 2024, at a federal courthouse in Greenbelt, a Maryland suburb of the nation's capital. Mosby is to be sentenced for lying about her personal finances so she could improperly access retirement funds during the COVID-19 pandemic. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A former top prosecutor for the city of Baltimore is to be sentenced this week for lying about her personal finances so she could improperly access retirement funds during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sentencing for former Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby is set to open Thursday at a federal courthouse in Greenbelt, a Maryland suburb of the nation’s capital. Two juries separately convicted Mosby of perjury and mortgage fraud charges after trials involving her personal finances.

Mosby, 44, gained a national profile for charging six Baltimore police officers in the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a Black man fatally injured in police custody. Gray’s death led to riots and protests in the city. After three officers were acquitted, Mosby’s office dropped charges against the other three officers.

In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Mosby withdrew $90,000 from Baltimore city’s deferred compensation plan. She used the money to make down payments on vacation homes in Kissimmee and Long Boat Key, Florida.

Prosecutors argued that Mosby improperly accessed the funds under provisions of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act by falsely claiming that the pandemic had harmed her travel-oriented side business.

Mosby’s lawyers argued that she was legally entitled to withdraw the money and spend it however she wanted.

Federal prosecutors have recommended a 20-month prison sentence for Mosby, who served two terms as state’s attorney for Baltimore. She lost a reelection bid after her 2022 indictment.

“Ms. Mosby was charged and convicted because she chose to repeatedly break the law, not because of her politics or policies,” prosecutors wrote.

Mosby’s attorneys urged the judge to spare her from prison. They said she is the only public official who has been prosecuted in Maryland for federal offenses “that entail no victim, no financial loss, and no use of public funds.”

“Jail is not justice for Marilyn Mosby,” her lawyers wrote.

Mosby applied for a presidential pardon earlier this month. In a letter to President Joe Biden, the Congressional Black Caucus expressed support for her cause, the Baltimore Sun reported.

U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby agreed to move Mosby’s trials from Baltimore to Greenbelt, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Mosby’s attorneys argued that she couldn’t get a fair trial in Baltimore after years of negative media coverage there.