gerald singer 2.jpg

Gerald Singer in 2011

(Heather Lynn Peters | MLive.com)

Update 5 p.m.: This story has been updated with comment from an arson victim.

RAND RAPIDS, MI –

, former Muskegon-area landlord and convicted serial arsonist for profit, has been sentenced to 55 years in federal prison.

U.S. District Judge Gordon J. Quist imposed that sentence – mandatory under federal law given Singer’s multiple convictions of arson, mail fraud and tax fraud – Thursday morning, Nov. 7.

The diminutive, 74-year-old Singer – imprisoned since a federal jury convicted him of multiple felonies in March -- looked startlingly different from the well-groomed businessman he once was.

He was led into Quist’s courtroom wearing a short-sleeved orange prison jumpsuit, hands shackled behind him, sporting a long, bushy, gray beard and long hair. His hands were freed after he reached the defense table, then recuffed after the sentencing was over and he was led out.

Singer chose not to speak at his sentencing, but he appeared in good spirits. During about a half-hour before the judge entered the courtroom, Singer sat and frequently spoke with his lawyer, Michael R. Bartish, sometimes chuckling.

None of Singer’s arson victims attended the sentencing to speak.

Before Quist imposed sentence, Bartish and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael A. McDonald made their cases on sentencing: McDonald, arguing for the 55 years mandated by statute; Bartish arguing that such a sentence was “cruel and unusual punishment” and therefore a violation of Singer’s constitutional rights. Bartish said he would appeal on that basis.

“It just seems to me that for this offense, the sentence is certainly greater than necessary,” Bartish said.

The judge and attorneys agreed that federal law mandated the 55-year sentence because it requires “stacking” or consecutive sentences for several of Singer’s convictions – two of them for 20 years, one for 10 years and another for five years.

McDonald said the government actually tried to bargain with Singer earlier – even after his conviction – to net him a shorter total sentence, but he refused to deal, apparently betting first on acquittal and then on a successful appeal.

“The United States did not set out simply to obtain the longest sentence possible,” McDonald said.

In Singer’s dealings with the government, McDonald said, as in his career as a landlord, “Mr. Singer was a gambler.”

Bartish asked the judge to recommend Singer be placed in a federal medical center. “Mr. Singer’s health, I have observed ... has deteriorated pretty significantly” since his conviction, Bartish said. “I’m concerned about his health.”

Quist said he’d leave that decision up the Federal Bureau of Prisons and merely ordered that Singer be given a thorough physical examination.

Bartish also requested that Singer be lodged in a prison as close to the Chicago and Michigan areas as possible. Quist did not respond to that, except to note that he’d heard that Singer’s son, with whom Singer’s wife now lives, is estranged from his father and “pretty upset with him.”

As required by law, Quist ordered Singer to pay restitution of nearly $700,000 to various insurance companies and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service – although, the judge noted, that’s mostly “academic” because a pre-sentence investigation showed Singer no longer has any assets.

The approximately $60,000 in Singer assets that were seized after his conviction will be apportioned among the claimants, the judge said.

A federal jury on March 22 found Singer guilty of 11 counts. Singer was immediately taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals Service. The verdict came at the end of a four-week trial after about one day of deliberations.

The West Michigan jury found Singer guilty of one count of mail fraud, three counts of use of fire to commit a mail fraud, two counts of arson, four counts of filing a false tax-related document and one count of obstructing tax administration. The jury acquitted him of three counts of use of fire to commit a mail fraud.

The victim of one of the early house fires, Delaina Peters, interviewed after the sentencing, still suffers from the experience.

Peters lived in a rented house on Eighth Street in Muskegon Heights that burned in August 1996. Although Singer was acquitted of using fire to commit mail fraud in that case, he was convicted of another count of mail fraud involving that fire and eight others.

Peters' children, then ages 9, 2 and less than 1 year, were inside the house with a babysitter when the fire was set. Delaina and her husband-to-be were at a friend's birthday party and drove home to see their house in flames with firefighters surrounding it.

"For 16 years we've struggled because of what that one day did for our family," she said. "You never recover.

"He got to enjoy 16 years in the lap of luxury. My family, pretty much, we were all prisoners," she said. "Because you don't trust anybody. You're constantly looking over your shoulders. ... Hopefully I can sleep knowing that he's going to be locked up."

The arson-for-profit case was investigated by the Grand Rapids office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation and the Muskegon Heights Fire Department. A majority of the fires occurred in Muskegon Heights.

The Muskegon Heights Fire Department began investigating Singer in August 2007 and federal investigators joined the probe in early 2009.

Authorities said the arson-for-profit scheme spanned more than 14 years, from 1993 to 2007, and involved nine fires in Muskegon Heights, Muskegon, Norton Shores, Grand Haven and Gary, Ind.

Singer’s actual arson convictions were for a Nov. 9, 2006, fire at 250 Myrtle St. in Muskegon and an Aug. 28, 2007, fire at a four-unit apartment house at 2608-2614 Seventh St. in Muskegon Heights. The “use of fire to commit a mail fraud” convictions were for those fires plus the June 20, 1999, burning of The Fair fabric store at 1292 E. Broadway Ave. in Norton Shores.

The jury acquitted Singer of using fire to commit a mail fraud for three other fires: an Aug. 25, 1996, fire at 3101 Eighth St. in Muskegon Heights, one on Aug. 22, 2002, at 2340 Wood St. in Muskegon Heights and one on June 21, 2006, in Gary, Ind.

However, the mail fraud conviction included all six of those fires plus three others: at 530 Elliott St. in Grand Haven, burned March 1, 1993; 2809 Hoyt St. in Muskegon Heights, burned July 23, 1995; and the Airline and Diamond motels, 2818 and 2820 Peck St. in Muskegon Heights, burned Sept. 1, 1997.

The jury also convicted Singer of filing a false tax-related document in the years 2005 through 2008 for failing to declare approximately $500,000 in insurance proceeds from the burning of The Fair fabric store.

Finally, the jury found Singer guilty of obstructing administration of the tax laws in these five ways:

• Causing false income-tax returns to be filed for 2005 through 2008.

• Making false or misleading statements to IRS officials about those returns.

• Misleading his tax preparer.

• Concealing income from the IRS by “structuring” insurance payouts in individual checks of $10,000 or less.

• Causing the filing of false home-buyer tax credit claims against the IRS.

John S. Hausman covers courts, prisons, the environment and local government for MLive/Muskegon Chronicle. Email him at jhausman@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter.