Judge gives Peninger a break

Making a tearful request in a faded striped jumpsuit Monday, convicted schemer M. Derrick Peninger caught a break.

Following more than two weeks in the county lock-up, the 50-year-old Peninger asked that U.S. District Judge P. Michael Duffy allow him time to sort through his finances and health care and to attend to his mother and his ailing stepfather.

"I'll do anything you ask me to do if you just let me try to embrace this and say goodbye to the people I've hurt and am leaving," Peninger told Duffy on Monday.

Duffy granted him 60 days to spend at his mother's home under monitoring before reporting to a federal prison in North Carolina.

There, Peninger will undergo a second opinion on his mental health evaluation and then return to his mother's home, again under monitoring, until his sentencing hearing in about four or five months.

A jury on Oct. 2 found Peninger guilty of eight counts of mail fraud and one count of lying to an FBI agent in what investigators call a Ponzi scheme that consumed $7 million in investors' money.

Duffy ordered him into custody that day, concerned about the risk that Peninger would harm himself or others.

On Monday, defense attorney Kerry Koon introduced a psychiatrist, another attorney and Peninger's mother to tell Duffy otherwise.

Peninger's 72-year-old mother began reading a letter to the judge describing her husband's Alzheimer's disease and the couple's need to have her son home.

She shared only a few sentences before sobbing and asking Koon to read the rest.

"We desperately need Derrick here to help and guide with these changes," it said.

Peninger hung his head from the defense table and cried before addressing the judge himself.

He described his first three days in solitary confinement at the Charleston County Detention Center as "the bottom of life" and promised not to flee if released.

"If I run, I abandon my mother and my stepfather," he said. "I set a further bad example for my two children."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Rhett DeHart argued that Peninger has no job and no assets and, for a middle-aged man, could spend a daunting number of years in prison.

Peninger faces a maximum penalty

of 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

"What Mr. Koon is asking for is fairly extraordinary," DeHart said.

He added that some victims of Peninger's Ponzi scheme fear his release.

Duffy and both attorneys left the courtroom before the judge made his decision.

Peninger turned around and said hello to his stepfather, who asked to go with him.

After Duffy announced his order, he told Peninger, "I don't think I need to give you any admonitions or caveats. This has to work, or you're in a heap of trouble."

Reach Allyson Bird at 937-5594 or abird@postandcourier.com.