Sentencing on 17 fraud convictions scheduled Thursday in U.S. District Court

Michael Holtzman Herald News Staff Reporter @MDHoltzman

SOMERSET – As long-delayed sentencing is set for Thursday that could bring John Silvia Jr. up to five years in jail, his lawyer filed motions to delay its execution.

“A sentencing court may stay a defendant’s sentence pending his appeal if the officer finds by ‘clear and convincing evidence that the person is not likely to flee or pose a danger to the safety of any other person or to the community’ and ‘that the appeal is not for the purpose of delay’” the motion by Criminal Justice Administration program attorney Hank Brennan says in part.

Silvia, 68 of 305 Foley St., a disbarred lawyer and former town teacher and school board member, was convicted at U.S. District Court trials in 2016 and 2017 on 17 counts of securities, mail and wire fraud from several victims totaling $367,500.

On behalf of U.S. Attorney Andrew E. Lelling, prosecutors in the case said, “The court should order immediate remand at sentencing and not permit self-surrender” at a later time.

His initial sentencing has been delayed for nearly a year while the court considered Brennan’s motions for a new trial, and allowed five days of evidentiary hearings for the new trial last summer.

U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. on Monday denied the defendant’s motion for a new trail.

He ordered sentencing on Thursday at 2:45 p.m. in U.S. District Court, Boston.

 

Brennan, writing on Tuesday his intention to appeal O’Toole’s decision the day before, said, “The requirement that the appeal raise ‘a substantial question of law or fact’ means that the case presents ‘a “close” question or one that very well could be decided the other way.’”

He referenced a 1985 1st Circuit Court case of the United States versus Bayko.

Brennan said their motion for a new trial “raised numerous and serious challenges to the adequacy of the representation he (Silvia) received at his first trial.”

Brennan issued a second motion that O’Toole strike two government exhibits the prosecution referenced and attached in its sentencing memorandum request.

They referenced Silvia’s disbarment in 2003 by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and an order by the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Securities Division, “which is over two decades older and is unrelated to the conduct for which the defendant was convicted,” Brennan wrote.

Silvia became notorious and widely known in that Massachusetts Securities Division case brought action against Silvia and his Somerset company, Environmental Recovery Systems of Somerset Inc., in 1995.

That civil case resulted in a Massachusetts Court of Appeals decision in 2004 that Silvia repay approximately 400 people on an estimated $19.4 million that had been invested but roughly a quarter of it, or about $12 million, of it repaid.

The prosecution memorandum said it raised those unrelated cases to show the disbarred lawyer has “a documented history of fraud.”

Email Michael Holtzman at mholtzman@heraldnews.com or call him at 508-676-2573.