Bilked pair against man’s early release

BANGOR – A Hartland couple wants the Dexter man who bilked them out of more than $15,000 to serve his entire prison sentence instead of being released early so he can work and begin paying back at least some of the $5 million he owes victims in restitution.

Shirley Elliott Turner, 44, and Paul Turner, 41, said at a news conference Friday that they had been notified by the state Department of Corrections that William A. Gourley, 65, has applied for supervised community release.

That program would allow him to serve the last year of his sentence under a form of house arrest. He would be able to leave his home to work, meet with his probation officer and obtain health care.

If Gourley were to be accepted into the program, he could be released on Oct. 1, said Denise Giles, victim services coordinator for the Corrections Department.

If he is not admitted to the early-release program, Gourley is due to be released on Oct. 1, 2008, because he has earned time off his sentence for good behavior.

Of the 2,129 people incarcerated in Maine prisons, 13 are on supervised community release, according to Giles.

Gourley was sentenced in August in Penobscot County Superior Court to five years in prison with 21/2 years suspended and four years of probation. He also was ordered to pay at least $50 a week in restitution.

“He’s not going to live long enough to pay back everybody,” Paul Turner said Friday. “All we’ll ever see is about $10 every three months.”

Gourley pleaded no contest in February 2006 to one count of theft by deception. In a plea agreement with prosecutors, three other theft charges and one count each of the sale of unregistered securities and securities fraud were dropped. Prosecutors also agreed to drop similar charges against Gourley’s wife and business partner, Barbara Gourley, 53.

Prosecutors called Gourley’s scam the largest real estate fraud in recent state history. Assistant Attorney General Lara Nomani, who prosecuted the case, estimated last year that Gourley had bilked 170 people, including the Turners, out of nearly $5 million.

The Gourleys ran their business like a Ponzi scheme, Nomani said last year. They solicited investment for their real estate development business by promising unusually high rates of return, between 12 percent and 20 percent, then paying interest on the investments by recruiting still more investors.

Before the couple sold parcels to the Turners and others, investors were given liens on the property in exchange for the money they had invested.

“We just feel that he shouldn’t be released,” Shirley Turner said. “He hasn’t paid the victims back. If he’s released early, I’ll feel victimized all over again.”

The Turner couple purchased what they thought was 57 acres from the Gourleys several years ago. They found out later that they in fact owned only 44 acres and that there were at least two other mortgages on the property where she and her husband have been living in a trailer.

State law required that Gourley tell buyers there were liens on their properties.

She said Friday that the property was about to be foreclosed on. She estimated that including the money they had paid for the property and the upgrades they have made, the couple has lost about $40,000.

“I want him in prison,” she said. “If he’s out working, he’ll probably cheat other people like he did me.”