FORGER SENTENCED

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler announced today the sentencing of Dee Deirdre Farmer, also known as Douglas Farmer, 41, on his earlier guilty plea to Obstruction of Justice and Misuse of a Death Certificate.

Farmer, of the 3800 block of Elmley Avenue in Baltimore, was sentenced to serve 18 months in the Division of Correction by the Honorable Roger Brown of the Baltimore City Circuit Court for having forged a court order in an attempt to change someone else’s death certificate to reflect that he, Farmer, had died. When Farmer presented the forged court order to the State Division of Vital Records, agency staff noticed something unusual about the order, and they reported it to the Attorney General’s Office. In fact, the order was a complete fabrication, prepared by Farmer in the hopes of being able to use the altered death certificate to get unrelated criminal charges pending against him in federal court and Baltimore County Circuit Court dismissed.

In his guilty plea, Farmer also admitted to forging an Affidavit, ostensibly in the name of a Lt. William Cherry of the Baltimore County Police Department, to the effect that crimes committed in the name of Farmer were actually committed by a Larry Prescott, who, the affidavit claimed, had stolen Farmer’s identity. Actually, Farmer had stolen Prescott’s identity 20 years ago, and Lt. William Cherry is fictional. Farmer met Prescott, a correctional officer at the Baltimore City Detention Center, when he was incarcerated there on Prescott’s tier. Farmer filed the fraudulent Cherry “affidavit” in an unrelated Baltimore City Circuit Court criminal case pending against him, presumably in an effort to get those charges dismissed as well.

The case was referred to the Criminal Investigations Division of the Attorney General’s Office by the State Division of Vital Records, and was investigated with the assistance of the Maryland State Police.