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Former U.Va. football player sentenced to 40 years in prison

By Megan Cloherty

A University of Virginia player, who played for the Philadelphia Eagles, has been sentenced to 40 years in prison after being convicted of using his football connections in an investment scam.

Shortly after his professional career ended, prosecutors said 39-year-old Merrill Robertson Jr. and his friend had an idea: to sell unknowing individuals on investment opportunities they proposed.

Without any financial experience, federal prosecutors said Robertson and his co-conspirator, Sherman Vaughn, misled investors and spent $10 million of their clients’ retirement contributions and investments.

Robertson was a football player at Virginia’s Fork Union Military Academy, the University of Virginia and the Eagles.

Exploiting contacts from his football days, Robertson and Vaughn used two companies — Cavalier Union Investments and Black Bull Wealth Management — to scam millions of dollars from more than 60 investors, including former coaches, from 2008 to 2016, authorities said.

After spending most of the money, federal prosecutors said, the men began to falsify loan applications to various banks and credit unions in 2015.

A federal jury found Robertson guilty of conspiracy, mail wire and bank fraud, and money laundering in October. He faced a maximum of 330 years in prison for his crimes.

Vaughn was previously found guilty and sentenced to 12 years in prison on lesser charges.

US House campaigns are underway. Yet a redistricting battle triggered by Trump rages in some states

By The Associated Press
Candidates are campaigning and voting is underway in some primaries. Yet a national battle to redraw U.S. House districts for partisan advantage is still raging in some states ahead of the November midterm elections. Voters in Texas and North Carolina already have cast ballots in primary elections for U.S. House districts redrawn at President Donald Trump's urging. But the final boundaries for voting districts remain uncertain in Missouri, even though candidates already are filing for office. And they also are unclear in Virginia, where new congressional districts could hinge both on a voter referendum and court rulings. Voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade, after each census. But Trump triggered an unusual round of mid-decade redistricting when he urged Texas Republicans last summer to redraw House districts to give the GOP an edge in the midterm elections. California Democrats reciprocated, and a tit-for-tat redistricting clash soon spread. So far, Republicans believe they could win nine additional seats in states where they have redrawn congressional districts, while Democrats think they could gain six seats elsewhere because of redistricting. But that presumes past voting patterns hold in November. And that's uncertain, especially since the party in power typically loses seats in the midterms and Trump faces negative approval ratings in polls.
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