2 min read

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (AP) – Anthony Doria, who founded the Vermont Law School and ran for the U.S. Senate, is headed to prison for defrauding a woman of $115,000.

Doria was sentenced in federal court to one month in prison, five months of home confinement and three years of probation on federal tax evasion charges. He must also make restitution to his victim. Doria, 78, of South Royalton, is due to report to prison Feb. 7.

Doria was initially charged with fraud, but he pleaded guilty last summer to the lesser charge.

Prosecutors claimed Doria took the money from Barbara Umbrecht of Newport, N.H., in 1998 and 1999. She believed he was investing the money on her behalf.

Umbrecht said she was disappointed with the sentence.

Doria’s lawyer, Barbara O’Connor, had asked U.S. District Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha to allow Doria to serve his time in a prison medical center.

“A jail term for Anthony Doria, at 78 years of age, seems unproductive,” said O’Connor. She said the embarrassment caused by the charges was “extreme punishment.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Woodcock said “embarrassment is not in the sentencing guidelines.” “Mr. Doria did nothing good for Mrs. Umbrecht,” she said. “He wasn’t investing her money, he wasn’t even putting it in savings. He was spending it.”

Doria pleaded guilty to charges that he did not file tax documents for the money he received from Umbrecht, who was in her 70s when the two met.

Umbrecht will begin receiving payments early next year from a property owned by Doria.

Doria helped found the Vermont Law School. In 1986 he ran in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat held by Sen. Patrick Leahy.



Information from: Lebanon Valley News, http://www.vnews.com

Comments are no longer available on this story