Former Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson to be sentenced Friday
Former Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson hopes to avoid prison after her sentencing Friday afternoon.
Fernandes Anderson was arrested in December in connection with running a kickback scheme with a family member whom she employed in her City Hall office, using public funds to help with her own financial struggles.
She pleaded guilty in May to one count of wire fraud and one count of theft involving federal funds and originally set to be sentenced in July but it was delayed. She resigned her District 7 council seat in June, MassLive previously reported .
She is expected to be sentenced at 3 p.m. Friday before Judge Indira Talwani.
In court filings in August, prosecutors and Fernandes Anderson's attorneys sparred over whether she should serve time behind bars.
Scott Lauer, the public defender assigned to the case, said the former council member's "history and characteristics suggest that her offence was [an] aberration that will not be repeated."
"Ms. Fernandes Anderson is devastated to have disappointed those who placed their trust in her. Although she cannot fully repair this breach of trust, she has resolved to be accountable for it," Lauer wrote in a sentencing memo to U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani.
Fernandes Anderson has "accepted responsibility, tendered a guilty plea, and relinquished her seat on the council. The Court's task is now to determine what sentence will be 'sufficient, but not greater than necessary' to accomplish the purposes of sentencing," he wrote.
Lauer asked Talwani to "impose a probationary sentence with a requirement that she complete a significant amount of community service."
Federal prosecutors asked Talwani to impose a sentence of a year and a day in federal prison, three years of supervised release, $13,000 in restitution, and a "special assessment" of $200.
That sentence is "sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to comply" with the law, prosecutors argued in a similar memo , pointing to Fernandes Anderson's "egregious breach of the public trust and her pattern of fraud, deceit and false narratives."
Several members of Boston City Council and a trio of state lawmakers asked Talwani to show leniency in her sentencing, The Boston Herald reported.
Fernandes Anderson's husband, Tanzerius Anderson, is currently waiting to hear if he has been granted parole.
Tanzerius Anderson was 19 years old when he shot and killed Inaam Yazbek on March 25, 2000. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The two married while he was in prison after a "chance encounter in 2011″ when she ran into Tanzerius Anderson's family, according to Boston Magazine .
She had remembered him as the brightest in their class and began writing to him, the magazine wrote. They talked about everything from religion to quantum physics to politics.
"We fell in love," she told the outlet, and they got married in 2013.
"My friends asked me, 'Why, you have nothing with him, nothing physical, no support?'" she told Boston Magazine. "But when you know he is your person, you know. How dare I reject destiny?"
In 2024, the Supreme Judicial Court decision stated emerging adults between the ages of 18-20 cannot be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in Massachusetts.
The high court ruled that life sentences for defendants within that age group are unconstitutional and amount to "cruel and unusual punishment."
Due to the decision, Tanzerius Anderson, currently in Northeastern Correctional Center (NECC), was allowed to go in front of the parole board for the first time on Aug. 12.
The parole board has not made a decision as of Friday. It typically takes months before decisions are made.
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