Amissville contractor gets 36 years in prison for fraud

Rappahannock County resident Lawrence Wood Jr. was sentenced to 36 years in prison and 12 months in a county jail on Monday for 18 counts of forgery and construction fraud.

Wood was sentenced two years in prison for each of the 18 felony counts by 20th Circuit Court Judge James Fisher with no time suspended. He must also pay restitution to the clients he defrauded, including more than $16,000 to Town of Washington resident Megan Smith.

Wood, an Amissville carpenter, has faced more than 60 criminal violations in Rappahannock County and was sentenced to four years in jail in September 2020 for similar crimes. Wood’s criminal record dates back to 1994 and spans over seven counties in Northern Virginia.

“Everyday at liberty is a day someone could become a potential victim,” Fisher said.

Commonwealth Attorney Art Go called Wood a “menace to society” and said his crimes show a “fundamental deceit and wickedness.”

Smith was present in court on Monday to give a witness impact statement, saying that she entered into a $40,000 contract with Wood before the pandemic for the construction of a sunroom.

She said that he never nished the job and dodged her phone calls and emails for almost a year. Smith said she has not received any of the money back and has a newfound distrust for contractors.

“This is violence of a di erent sort,” Go said. “He’s a menace to people. He takes their money … to never be seen or heard from again.”

In 2018, Wood entered into a contract with Brooke Farrell, of Huntly, where he was asked to build a $33,466 barn. Farrell advanced Wood money to build the barn, which was never completed. Wood sent Farrell a check to refund the money, but when Farrell went to cash it, the check was returned by the bank for insu cient funds.

In July 2020, Wood stole checks from the home of Dyke Halle in Woodville, where he forged Halle’s signature on a $2,875 check and cashed it July 2020.

Wood will serve his prison and county jail terms consecutively with the four-year sentence he was given last year.