A Virginia woman has told the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals she should be resentenced because her attorney provided bad advice, resulting in her receiving a 30-year prison term for selling her boyfriend's property while he was incarcerated.

Shebri Dillon was given the harsh sentence after her attorney misled her about the potential sentencing outcomes, telling her she would only receive up to six months in prison, when in reality she was facing more than 160 years in prison for the charges, she said in her opening brief, filed Tuesday.

"There is no serious question in this appeal that counsel was constitutionally defective — some of the advice provided was objectively wrong," the brief said. "The principal question instead is whether these constitutional violations prejudiced Dillon because there is a 'reasonable probability' that either her convictions or sentence would have been different with effective advice. They did."

Dillon was indicted in June 2015 after she allegedly stole property from her then-boyfriend, who was incarcerated for sexual abuse crimes against Dillon's goddaughter. The boyfriend admitted to Dillon that he committed the crime, and asked her to sell certain items of his to cover costs associated with his cases, Dillon said.

Once the boyfriend was released, he claimed Dillon had sold more than he requested; rather than a few items, she had sold his house, his car and other property and drained his bank accounts, the brief said.

Dillon was indicted on 15 counts of financial fraud, including embezzlement, credit card fraud, grand larceny and money laundering. Dillon and an attorney appointed by the court began negotiating a plea deal, with the attorney telling Dillon the most she was likely to get was six months, according to the appeals brief.

Despite that attorney's claims that Dillon would only spend six months in jail, Virginia law at the time allowed juries to select a sentence without knowing the sentencing guideline range, and a judge could reduce, but not enhance, the sentence based on the statutory maximums, according to the brief.

The result of the sentencing arrangement is that Dillon actually faced a statutory maximum of 160 years in prison based on the maximum statutory calculation, not six months as her attorney counseled, the brief said.

Dillon also sought to testify on her own behalf to rebut key elements of the state's case that she had left her boyfriend with nothing, when in fact, she claimed, she turned over a large amount of personal property to his cousin to keep in a storage locker.

Her attorney never called Dillon as a witness, however, and after the trial it was revealed that during a break he advised her that if she testified she would be waiving her right to appeal the verdict, causing Dillon to decline to speak at trial, according to the brief.

A jury sentenced Dillon to three consecutive 10-year sentences for money laundering, grand larceny and obtaining money by false pretenses with the other five charges running concurrently.

Dillon claimed in the appeal that as a result of her attorney's advice, she believed her sentence would be significantly less, and she also forfeited an opportunity to testify in her own defense, affecting the outcome of both the trial and her sentence.

Representatives for the parties did not respond to requests for comment.

Dillon is represented by Joshua Morgan Wesneski, Natalie Komrovsky Trujillo and Adam Wade Mitchell of Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP.

The government is represented by Craig Stallard of the Virginia Attorney General's Office.

The case is Dillon v. Dotson, case number 23-6995, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.