Anti-Semitic Crime Allegedly Scam Three Charged With Masking Fraud, Arson As Hate Crime

Two men and a woman were arrested Friday on charges they vandalized and set fire to their Reedsport apartment in what authorities said was an insurance scam masked as an anti-Semitic crime.

Dan Davenport and Lee and Sherry Armstrong were arraigned in U.S. District Court on charges of arson, fraud and conspiracy and released pending an appearance next Thursday.

The FBI began a civil rights investigation before the fire last year at the request of Davenport and the Armstrongs.

Sherry Armstrong took the unusual step of writing letters to news organizations last March saying they had become the targets of the investigation and asking for help.

Some community members said they were suspicious early on.

“It became very clear from the beginning that this was a hoax,” said Jim Deardorff, the former chairman of the Reedsport Human Relations Task Force.

Three community members, including Deardorff, formed the task force after the Armstrong’s apartment building was spray-painted with graffiti last year.

The vandalism included swastikas painted on the walls of the building and phrases scratched in the paint of Davenport’s car while it was parked outside a North Bend shopping mall.

When Deardorff and his wife heard about the graffiti, they and other community members helped clean it up.

He said the Armstrongs and Davenport made no effort to help.

“Basically their feeling was that we were just doing this for show,” Deardorff said. “But we were not doing this for the town’s reputation. We were just deeply concerned.”

The task force did extensive interviewing of minority community members and didn’t find evidence of an inordinate amount of prejudice.

The group scheduled multicultural events, including inviting a Holocaust survivor to speak at the local high school.

Police Chief John Smart said the arrests help vindicate a community that was being painted as racist.

“It gave this community a black eye and that deserves to be cleaned up,” he said.

Originally from Pennsylvania, the Armstrongs moved to the coastal town of Reedsport in January 1994.