Prison Sentence for Perjury in a Bankruptcy Case

A federal judge sentenced Douglas W. Cox, 44, to ten months in prison for perjury. In April, Cox admitted that, during a bankruptcy deposition, he testified falsely about the ownership of five vending machines.

United States Attorney Robert Clark Corrente announced the sentence, which Chief U.S. District Court Judge Ernest C. Torres imposed in U.S. District Court, Providence.

At the plea hearing in April, Assistant U.S. Attorney James H. Leavey said that the government could prove that, during a deposition taken in March 2004, Cox falsely stated that he did not own the vending machines at issue. Cox, who had a business in East Providence and filed for bankruptcy in 2003, had actually purchased the machines in January 2003 and still owned them when the deposition was taken.

Cox's brother-in-law, Louis C Silva, of East Providence, has pleaded guilty to perjury for falsely testifying in a bankruptcy hearing that he, and not Cox, owned the machines. Silva is scheduled to be sentenced on January 10, 2007.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee investigated the cases. Assistant U.S. Attorney Leavey is prosecuting them.

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