Columbia couple sentenced for stealing $1.7 million from dying Army veteran

Sam Hayes said it all started because he was trying to be a good neighbor.

But on Wednesday, Hayes, 70, was sentenced to federal prison for stealing $1.7 million from a dying Army veteran who lived in his neighborhood in Columbia.

Bobby Davidson, 82, was found unresponsive on the floor of his modest home in April 2021 after Hayes called 911 for a welfare check. By October, Davidson was dead, and Hayes had used his power of attorney over Davidson’s personal affairs to loot his neighbor’s savings, buying new cars, investment properties, and rental homes.

In a federal courthouse Wednesday, U.S. Judge Mary Lewis sentenced Hayes to 36 months in federal prison. His wife, Naomi Hayes, was sentenced to 18 months.

“It was an egregious fraud...of everything he had earned over a lifetime.” said Assistant US Attorney Winston Holliday. “If by some miracle he had recovered, he would have been destitute.”

The sentencing followed Hayes’ guilty plea to wire fraud. His wife, Naomi, pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony, or helping cover up a serious crime. The case was initially brought to the attention of the Richland County Sheriff’s Department who brought the Secret Service, which has expertise in financial crimes, into the case.

Federal guidelines indicated Hayes should get a sentence of a little over eight years in prison. But Holliday said he was receptive to a lesser sentence because Hayes had confessed immediately and was helping to convert assets purchased with stolen money back into cash so they could be returned to Hayes’ estate.

“I took care of him, I thought I could take care of my family too,” said Hayes, weeping. “I thought God left it to me. I didn’t know I was stealing from him.”

When Davidson was in the hospital, Prisma Health was unable to locate any of his next of kin. So Prisma reached out to Hayes, who had been listed as a contact by emergency responders. Hayes, who had been acquainted with Davidson for years, initially agreed to sign a medical power of attorney in order to get Davidson into a nursing facility.

But Hayes said he was unaware of the responsibilities and obligations that came with the role. “I started getting medical bills in the mail. $15,000, $20,000 – I got one for $102,000.”

Panicked, Hayes said that he accepted a Prisma representative’s suggestion that he set up a durable power of attorney, giving him full control over Davidson’s assets.

After he got the durable power of attorney, Sam Hayes kept trying to locate a relative of Davidson’s with no success, he told the judge. Davidson’s only known relative, his mother, was dead.

At that point, Hayes said, he concluded that having the durable power of attorney meant “I had control of his money. I thought it meant I could do what I wanted with it.”

By the time Davidson died in October 2021, almost all of the money had been spent according to the US Attorney’s Office. Hayes bought himself a new Chrysler, an Infiniti for his wife and a new Toyota for his son. As well as purchasing land and investment properties, Hayes paid off his own mortgage and gave money to his sister, which she used to pay off her own home.

Sam Hayes’ attorney, Taylor Bell, described his client as a hard-working man whose most advanced education was at a segregated high school in Clarendon County.

Hayes spent five years in the U.S. Army, leaving with an honorable discharge. Later, Hayes worked as a painter and handyman. Over his career, his earnings ranged from $20,000 to $36,000 a year — “barely over minimum wage,” Bell told the judge. “Mr. Hayes had never seen that much money.”

At the time of the theft, Sam Hayes was already suffering from lung cancer and congestive heart failure. He is undergoing immunotherapy and has received courses of chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

“He has a mean time of survival of 19 months,” Bell said, who stated that Hayes had a 44% chance of living five years.

“Anything within the [sentencing] guidelines is a life sentence.”

Ruminating on a proper sentence, Judge Lewis said that Hayes qualified for a lower prison term because of his background, his serious illnesses and, most of all, because he had not tried to hide what he did and was helping convert the money he stole back into cash to give to the government.

The judge said, “It sounds like you started out in a good place and got in way over your head.”

But, she added, “I’m concerned you knew the difference between using the money to pay medical bills for the victim and using the money to pay for things for your family and your debts.”

“I thought it was God’s blessing to me to help my family,” said Hayes, beginning to weep. “If I had known it was stealing from that man, I never would have done it.”

“I apologize to the state of SC. I apologize to the Davidson family… Everybody that was dear to me in my heart, that I was close to, I made them suffer because of that money.”

Noami Hayes asks for mercy

When his wife’s sentence of 18 months in federal prison was read out, Sam Hayes held his head in his hands.

“I would ask the court to have mercy,” Naomi Hayes told the court, “I accept responsibility.”

The judge agreed that Naomi Hayes, 65, a retired registered nurse who had worked at Prisma Health Baptist and the University of South Carolina, was less to blame than her husband but should have been aware of the fraud.

“She definitely went along, but I don’t know without Sam’s influence on her that she would have cooked this up herself... This was not concocted by Mrs. Hayes at all,” said Holliday.

In arguing for a reduced sentence, Holliday described the couple as model defendants who had taken responsibility for their actions and assisted law enforcement in recovering the assets.

Although Naomi Hayes’ lawyer, Ramie Shalabi, described his client as “a perfect candidate for probation,” Holliday said she definitely knew her husband was stealing the life savings of a vulnerable neighbor.

“We can’t lose sight of whom the victim was in this case — an 82-year-old man whose accounts were cleaned out in just four months,” Holliday said. “You don’t want people out there to come across a situation like this and think they found their own lottery ticket.”

Lewis told Naomi Hayes that once her husband put $250,000 in a bank account for her, she had to know “something was going on. You should have put a stop to it.”

The couple is set to report to prison sometime before Dec. 1, after Sam Hayes has completed his 12th and final immunotherapy treatment.

“This was a major screw-up,” Lewis told Naomi Hayes. “It’s just awful what you did. You don’t seem like the kind of person who would do this, but you are.”

Reporter John Monk contributed to this story.