Marathon bilker’s reversed conviction at play in appeal

A man convicted of using his dead aunt’s name to try to bilk the primary fund for helping victims of the Boston Marathon bombings out of $2.1 million is fighting to lessen his sentence.

Attorney Chaleunphone Nokham will argue today before the state Appeals Court that his client Branden Mattier, 26, should be resentenced because the state’s high court last year reversed his conviction for identity fraud for lack of evidence. A jury convicted Mattier in 2014 of identity fraud, conspiracy and attempt to commit larceny.

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke sentenced Mattier to serve three years in prison on the conspiracy charge, followed by three years’ probation and 468 hours of community service. Mattier has already served his prison time and is now on probation, required to do volunteer work with amputee and brain-injury patients. Nokham’s appeal does not state what he believes a new sentence should be.

Though one of the charges on which Locke based the probation terms has been stricken, both he and the Supreme Judicial Court have denied Mattier a shot at resentencing, with the SJC ruling on the grounds that no change was likely.

Nokham’s appeal states his client must be afforded a resentencing hearing because, “Mattier’s case was in a significantly different posture after the SJC’s decision to reverse one of the three convictions.”

He doesn’t want Locke involved, complaining of his “indignation.”

Locke told Mattier at his sentencing he considered those who died or lost limbs in marathon bombings to be victims of the One Fund scam, too, “not only because you tried to take money out of their pocket, but that you so egregiously pretended to be among their number.”

Assistant Attorney General Eric A. Haskell countered in his filing opposing resentencing, “A sentencing judge may properly consider the egregiousness of the crime in view of the surrounding circumstances,” and that Locke did just that “in view of the harm caused by the Boston Marathon bombing and the benevolence demonstrated by donors to the One Fund.”

The One Fund had approved Mattier and his brother, who was also convicted, to receive $2.1 million on behalf of an aunt they claimed lost both her legs in the terrorist attack, but who in fact had been dead for years. They never received the money.