A notorious confidence man admitted his guilt in court yesterday, accepting a state prison sentence and agreeing to leave Massachusetts after his release rather than face trial, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.
DAVID WILLIAMS (D.O.B. 11/12/63), a.k.a. RAY DIAMOND, RUDY DIAMOND, and RUBY DIAMOND, of Dorchester pleaded guilty to a total of 25 indictments charging larceny and uttering for scamming almost a dozen people out of cash amounts up to $1,000 between October and December of last year.
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Carol Ball adjudged Williams a common and notorious thief and sentenced him to three years in state prison on 10 of the charges. At the request of Conley’s office, she placed the remaining 15 indictments on file for a period of 10 years without imposing a sentence.
If Williams doesn’t leave Massachusetts within 60 days of his release from prison and stay out until at least Dec. 7, 2021, he faces sentencing on each of the remaining 15 indictments – a potential total of 150 years behind bars.
“We won’t hesitate to resurrect these charges if Mr. Williams appears in the Commonwealth during that time,” Conley said, noting that the defendant has been running similar “short con” scams in the Boston area since at least 1999.
Had the case proceeded to trial, Assistant District Attorney Benjamin Goldberger of Conley’s Special Prosecutions Unit would have introduced evidence and testimony to prove that Williams used variations on a standard sob story to scam his victims out of cash, ostensibly to reclaim a vehicle that had been towed. In three cases, he convinced victims to buy him CVS and American Express gift cards as well, some worth hundreds of dollars.
Frequently wearing a suit and claiming to be from out of town, Williams would present victims with check to deposit, either asking for all of the face value in cash or offering the victim a small percentage to keep for himself. Each of the checks either had a forged signature or was itself a forgery. All of them later bounced.
In one incident, after presenting the victim with a forged $1,500 check to deposit, Williams took the man’s driver’s license as bogus “collateral” until the next day, when the victim would give him $1,500 in cash. That victim became suspicious and notified police. Williams never appeared for their scheduled rendezvous.
Boston Police and Suffolk prosecutors assigned to the case linked the various incidents not only through Williams’ appearance and consistent modus operandi, but also through a telephone number he gave to nine of his victims: Williams had set up an outgoing voice mail identifying it as the number for Diamond Engineering, which linked up to the “Ray Diamond” and “Rudy Diamond” aliases he used in his cons and bogus checks made out to Diamond Engineering that two of his victims accepted and deposited.
Only the victim who gave Williams his driver’s license refused to give him cash. In all, Williams admitted to stealing $5,080 from the other 10 victims in increments ranging from $80 to $1,000.
“There’s a saying that you can’t cheat an honest man, but we’ve seen many people with only the best intentions fall victims to scams like this,” Conley said. “Most of the victims in this case felt suspicious at one point or another, and I’d advise everyone to follow their instincts in a similar situation.”
Williams, who has a 30-page criminal record with more than 35 convictions for larceny-related offenses, was represented by attorney J. Whitfield Larrabee.
