‘Robin HUD’ Pleads Guilty to Theft of U.S. Funds, Feels ‘Terrific’

A Maryland real estate agent, dubbed “Robin HUD” after admitting that she stole millions of dollars in federal housing funds and gave some of it to the poor, pleaded guilty today and said she felt “terrific.”

Marilyn Louise Harrell smiled throughout the hearing in U.S. District Court in pleading guilty to charges that she stole at least $4.75 million and lied on her tax returns and to federal officials. Her trial was to have begun today.

She claimed she had decided to plead guilty as part of a plea agreement because she did not want to spend taxpayers’ money in a court proceeding.

She pleaded guilty to stealing government property and failing to report income for taxes. As part of the plea bargain, prosecutors dropped two other tax counts, two counts of lying to officials from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and one count of lying to a bank on a loan application.

But prosecutors said they still do not believe her story that she gave most of the money to charity.

“My assertion that she has been her own biggest charity will be fact” by April 20, the date she is to be sentenced, U.S. Atty. Breckinridge Willcox said at the hearing.

Prosecutors recommended a sentence ranging from 37 months to 46 months, roughly three to four years, in prison. The two charges to which she pleaded guilty carry a maximum sentence of 13 years in prison.

If convicted on all counts, she would have faced a maximum of 31 years in prison and more than $1 million in fines.

Harrell, 46, who confessed to government officials in December, 1988, became a symbol of mismanagement at HUD when scandal erupted there last summer. After her indictment last November, U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh said the case was the largest ever involving the theft of federal funds by an individual.

Harrell went against the advice of her attorney and freely discussed taking the money in testimony before Congress and in several nationally televised interviews.

Prosecutors say Harrell took at least $6.6 million from HUD, money generated by sales of HUD properties that Harrell handled as a private escrow agent for the agency.

Harrell said she has documents to prove that she took only $4.75 million in HUD funds. And she said that, contrary to the prosecutor’s assertion that only a little went to charity, in fact less than 6% of the money benefited her family.

Harrell said she hopes to be sentenced to perform community service but regards prison as a chance to get a college degree.

“I told the kids (her son, John, and his wife, Vicki) just think of it as Mom going away a few years for college,” said Harrell, who will become a grandmother sometime next month.