Depending on who was looking, Samuel Aaron Brabson was either a wheelchair-dependent accident victim in terrible pain or an iron-willed mountain climber who'd made a remarkable recovery.

This week, a Henrico County circuit judge ruled that Brabson was more the latter than the former and convicted him of two fraud-related felonies.

The Brabson-in-a-wheelchair tried to cash in on a $1.3 million accident insurance policy and ended up convicted of intent to commit larceny by fraud. And his receipt of more than $100,000 in attendant care and equipment from the state Department of Rehabilitative Services produced a conviction for actual fraud.

Testimony over a four-day trial before Circuit Judge Daniel T. Balfour produced an image of a handsome, athletic Brabson who wooed women with mountain hikes and competed in a triathlon at roughly the same time he told caregivers he could barely leave his wheelchair.

In August, when he is sentenced, Brabson, 33, will be looking at as long as 15 years behind bars, whether he's in a wheelchair or not.

Chief Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Duncan P. Reid described Brabson's change of condition as not so much a miracle of biblical proportion as a fraud revealed.

"For a year-and-a-half, he had fraud on his mind. It took a lot of stubbornness and a lot of determination, but thank God, he didn't pull it off," Reid said.

Brabson's attorney, John B. Russell, argued that his client may have disguised the extent of his injuries, but caregivers never challenged him. And state laws do not spell out the point at which a recovering person loses benefits, Russell said.

"Is Mr. Brabson guilty of portraying himself in different ways to different audiences? No question," Russell argued.

"Manipulative? Self-centered? Yes. A criminal? No."

In September 2006, just days after he told doctors and therapists that he could barely stand, investigators filmed Brabson pushing a lawnmower and performing a difficult, one-legged balancing maneuver to scrape dog waste from his shoe.

"I can't even do that," said Reid, who once competed in a triathlon in which Brabson also participated, unknown to him.

Brabson suffered a terrible injury in 2001 when his car was rear-ended by a garbage truck in Texas. Vertebrae were fused in his upper neck.

He moved to Virginia and claimed that he reinjured himself three years ago in another accident. A police investigator testified that the accident did little more than bend a license plate and damage paint.

Brabson and lawyers who formerly represented him worked up a claim on the $1.3 million policy for the second accident, backed by medical assessments, Russell told the court.

"He was chasing the pot of gold," Reid countered.

But Brabson also began a punishing rehabilitation regimen that made him a powerfully built man, especially in his upper body.

Yet witnesses said he also climbed mountains and walked around amusement parks squiring girlfriends. Brabson, who lives in the 11400 block of Scotsglen Court in Glen Allen, testified his condition wavers from bad to good.

But Reid and co-prosecutor Paul C. Galanides, who investigated the case, said caregivers continued providing care to Brabson because Brabson never revealed he was improving.

"He was always telling them he was doing crummy," Reid said. State-paid caregivers did Brabson's laundry, shopped for him and performed housecleaning chores. He received about $127,000 in care and benefits.

Reid created a chart showing how Brabson's physical accomplishments overlapped his statements to caregivers about his condition.

Judge Balfour said Russell's arguments have merit and may end up being considered by higher courts, but he said he was swayed by witness testimony that clearly trapped Brabson at his own game.

A woman who trained Brabson to become a court representative for abused children recalled Tuesday how she never saw him leave his wheelchair in more than a dozen training sessions.

But one day in Kroger's, another volunteer testified she was in a check-out line with her son and turned to find Brabson standing behind her with no visible means of support.

"Aaron?" she said, startled.

Brabson replied that Aaron was his twin brother, she said.

Brabson doesn't have a twin brother.

Outside court Tuesday, Brabson said he feels lucky to be alive, given the severity of his spinal cord injury.

"It's the same thing Christopher Reeve got," he said of the late actor who portrayed Superman and was paralyzed below the neck in a horseriding injury.

Prosecutor Reid described the injury using another term employed by doctors.

"They call it a hangman's fracture," Reid said.
Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or bmckelway@timesdispatch.com.