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Cheating people out of their life savings deserves more than six weekends in jail | READER COMMENTARY

Alfred A. Watson of the FBI's Baltimore field office and Robert Hur, U.S. Attorney for Maryland, announce in October that convicted Towson Ponzi schemer Kevin Merrill was sentenced to 22 years in prison. His wife, Amanda Merrill, was given six weekends in a Howard County jail on Jan. 24. (Ulysses Muñoz/Baltimore Sun)

I became enraged reading about how the wife of the Towson “Ponzi schemer” received what was referred to as a “stern sentence” of six consecutive weekends in jail (“Despite pleas for probation, federal judge hands down prison for wife of Towson Ponzi schemer,” Jan. 25). How disgusting on so many levels.

First and foremost, I asked myself what the sentence would have been if she was an African American? Nobody in good conscience could say there would have been an equivalent sentence.

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Secondly, it’s appalling to hear that the Ponzi schemer’s wife hung her head and cried and asked the judge to consider her two children at home. Give us all a break. The only ones who should be crying are those poor people who worked all of their lives and were cheated out of their life’s savings, or how about this — all of the African American men sitting in prison serving sentences far greater than the Ponzi schemer’s wife for much lesser crimes.

Adrienne Bannon, Pikesville

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