By Lawrence Buser
The Commercial Appeal
SOUTHAVEN, Tenn. — A Southaven man who pleaded guilty to his role in a $700,000 bogus-check scam says his three-year prison sentence is too harsh and will not be a deterrent to other white-collar criminals.
Robert Rainey also argues on appeal that the judge unfairly ordered him to give up his cable TV during the three-year period of supervision that follows his release from prison.
Rainey, 31, and his wife Elizabeth Rainey, 30, were among several people convicted in a fraud case in which they took $744,192 from Direct General Insurance Corp. where some of them worked.
Elizabeth Rainey, a claims adjustor for the company, is serving a four-year federal sentence.
She and another employee, Shana McBride, admitted writing bogus checks to friends and relatives purporting to be claims for legitimate customers.
Rainey’s husband received 224 of the bogus checks.
Robert Rainey, who is imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution at Texarkana, Texas, argued that there is no evidence to support federal guidelines that tie the length of sentence to the amount of loss caused by the fraud.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, however, supported U.S. Dist. Judge Jon McCalla’s decision to sentence Rainey to 37 months in prison, noting that the judge also considered the repetitive nature of the theft, protection of the public and the need for vocational training.
McCalla then added another condition for Rainey to follow upon release from prison.
“I’m going to require that you do a few things, like cancel cable TV,” McCalla said at the sentencing hearing. “The whole United States and your neighbor and every other taxpayer and every other premium payer can’t understand why you have got cable TV.”
The appeals court ruled that’s an issue Rainey could challenge later.
Copyright 2012 The Commercial Appeal, Inc.