A federal grand jury has indicted Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and several<\/p>\n\n\n\n
co-defendants for allegedly stealing about $5 million in FEMA disaster-relief funds and directing the money into her 2021 congressional campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prosecutors say she and her brother diverted a $5 million overpayment from a COVID-19 staffing contract awarded to their family\u2019s health-care company,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
moving the funds through multiple accounts before using them for political donations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The indictment also claims she conspired with her tax preparer to file a false return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prosecutors say the group created straw-donor schemes in which friends and relatives \u201cdonate\u201d money that actually came from FEMA funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If convicted, she faces up to 53 years in prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Attorney General Pam Bondi called the conduct \u201ca particularly selfish, cynical crime,\u201d adding, \u201cNo one is above the law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her primary opponent Elijah Manley said the indictment is \u201ca sad moment\u201d and that voters are ready to move past \u201cfraud, corruption, and distractions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal grand jury has indicted Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and several co-defendants for allegedly stealing about $5 million in FEMA disaster-relief funds and directing the money into her 2021 congressional campaign. Prosecutors say she and her brother diverted a $5 million overpayment from a COVID-19 staffing contract awarded to their family\u2019s health-care company, moving the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9441,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9439\/revisions\/9441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}