A $308,600 property lien was levied this week by the U.S. Department of Justice against a Warren County man serving a federal prison sentence in North Carolina on a wire fraud charge.

William A. Hillman Jr., 75, 212 Manchester Drive, was sentenced in January by U.S. District Judge David Bramlette to 35 months for defrauding two California residents out of $100,000 in an oil and gas royalty scheme in 2004.

Court documents show the two were told Hillman and his family owned about 420 acres of property in Louisiana, a claim found to be false in a federal indictment in 2008. A second indictment handed down in 2009 detailed six more counts of wire fraud while he was on pretrial release for the previous charges. Ten additional counts of wire fraud and money laundering were dismissed. Nine of those involved transfers of money from bank accounts in California, Texas and Florida to separate accounts in Vicksburg.

The filing is considered a lien for taxes and continues until the liability is satisfied, remitted, set aside or becomes unenforceable, according to federal criminal procedure guidelines.

Hillman had been held by the Warren County Sheriff’s Department on two occasions, Nov. 4 and Dec. 16, on warrants in Louisiana and Tennessee. He was held at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex’s medical unit and is set to be released in August 2012, according to the Federal Bureau of Prison