By Kenneth C. Rossignol
ST. MARY’S TODAY
LEONARDTOWN (Nov. 15, 2009) — On Wednesday, St. Mary’s Sheriff’s officers arrested Daniel Brown, 30, of Leonardtown on five arrest warrants dealing with allegations of fraud and obstruction of justice involving real estate transactions, according to Sheriff’s Capt. Daniel Alioto.
On Thursday, Brown was brought before St. Mary’s Circuit Court Judge C. Clarke Raley who ordered Brown held on $50,000 cash bail.
As of Friday, detailed charges against Brown were still not available at the Circuit Court Clerk’s Office, making verification of the charges against Brown difficult to understand, but it is reported that on Thursday, Assistant States Attorney Daniel White referred to the business operated by attorney John A. Mattingly Jr., and Brown as "a criminal enterprise".
The warrants contained charges that were handed down from the Grand Jury related to false and forged land deed information as well as obstruction of the Grand Jury.
Brown was being held on a "No Bond" status prior to his arraignment on Thursday. The investigation is continuing and additional charges and arrests are pending, say police.
On Wednesday, a search warrant raid on a BMW owned by Brown’s business partner, attorney John A. Mattingly Jr., was being conducted, say police. Capt. Alioto reports that documents of interest to his investigation were recovered from the vehicle.
Brown and State’s Attorney candidate John Mattingly are partners in a real estate investment firm which has been under scrutiny for most of this year, with two Grand Juries hearing evidence involving allegations of criminal conduct surrounding Graydon Sears LLC.
Brown, who has owned a chain of auto parts stores in the area, was the target of a search warrant served on his home on Sept. 24, 2009. During the search warrant raid, police seized 12 boxes of files belonging to John Mattingly.
Mattingly, in a letter to ST. MARY’S TODAY and published on Nov. 8, 2009, disclosed he has filed a federal lawsuit against St. Mary’s States Attorney Richard Fritz and the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department for illegally seizing his property the day after he filed as a candidate for election for the post of States Attorney.
Also arrested on Wednesday was Robert "Tip" Short, allegedly the boyfriend of Ericka Ford, who is the wife of cocaine kingpin Wendell Ford. The drivers license of Ericka Ford was found inside Daniel Brown’s home when the search warrant was executed, according to court documents.
Fritz is known to pull election year stunts.
In 1998 when he was in a tight race for States Attorney against Joseph A. Mattingly Jr., Fritz and then Sheriff Richard Voorhaar organized a team of deputies and spread out across the county on election eve and cleaned out all newsstands of that day’s edition of ST. MARY’S TODAY in order to prevent voters from reading critical news articles about himself and Voorhaar.
A federal lawsuit which was filed against Fritz, Voorhaar and the deputies was decided in favor of the newspaper with the United States Court of Appeals comparing Fritz and the deputies to antics of the Ku Klux Klan.
Brown was charged under dozens of sealed indictments which were issued on Nov. 4, 2009 and unsealed on Nov. 13, 2009.
Charges were numerous under the indictment including but not limited to: uttering, perjury, false documents, intimidating a juror, obstruction of justice, forgery, and taking advantage of a vulnerable adult.
Mattingly represented a woman who won a wrongful death suit involving her deceased husband and Brown is accused of wiping out the woman’s assets with false and shoddy construction work. Mattingly and Brown denied the charges, which are just beginning to become public and were first revealed in the search warrant.
Brown denies that he operated without a contractor’s license and simply worked as a building consultant for the work which was performed for the woman by day laborers. The woman later died and Mattingly says he continued to pay electric bills for the woman’s daughter and provided a place for her to live.
Mattingly contends that Fritz and his assistants are persecuting him and Brown due to Mattingly’s announcement last winter that he was going to run against him in the 2010 election.
Mattingly says that the prosecutors do not understand real estate law or deeds and that all of their real estate transactions are legal and valid and there are no "victims".
A bag full of cash, $20,000, has been floating around Leonardtown and has disappeared after Terry Clarke, who pleaded guilty to firearms violations, agreed to cooperate with investigators.
The money visited several local lawyers who all say that they didn’t get any of the loot, but police won’t say anything, indicating that they know where the loot went.
Deputy County Attorney David Weiskopf, who the police wrote in a the search warrant application that he witnessed the bribe of witnesses, told ST. MARY’S TODAY that he did not witness the bribe, only that he had seen the money when it was in John Mattingly’s office.
John Mattingly said in an interview that he had photographed persons in Baltimore as they signed deeds and photographed their drivers licenses and then had his secretary notarize the deeds the following day. This past week Mattingly said that he had not done so as reported and that the account printed in this newspaper must have been in error as the reporter had not taped the interview or used written notes.
ST. MARY’S TODAY stands behind our original story as being an accurate account of the interview over the issue of how deeds were handled on that occasion.
Fritz could have asked for a special prosecutor in the case and removed suspicion of political chicanery in the matter but his name is listed on the documents involving Brown filed in the court.
Police emphasize that more charges are pending against others in this matter.
