All USAO Press Releases

WASHINGTON — An indictment was unsealed today in the Southern District of Mississippi charging Hinds County District Attorney, Jody E. Owens II, 43; Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, 41; and former President and current member of the Jackson City Council, Aaron Banks, 47, all of Jackson, with participating in a bribery scheme to enrich themselves. Owens, Lumumba, and Banks are scheduled to make their initial court appearances today before U.S. Magistrate Judge LaKeysha Greer Isaac in Jackson.

MACON – A Georgia poll worker was arrested today for mailing a letter to the Jones County Elections Superintendent threatening poll workers.
According to the criminal complaint, Nicholas Wimbish, 25, of Milledgeville, Georgia, was serving as a poll worker at the Jones County Elections Office on Oct. 16 when he allegedly had a verbal altercation with a voter. 

Christopher Richardson, 37, formerly of San Antonio, Texas, was sentenced today to 18 months in prison for filing a false report with the Federal Election Commission and for credit card fraud.

Andre De Moya, 51, of Temple Hills, Maryland, was sentenced today to 30 months in prison, and Davoud Jafari, 72, of the District of Columbia, was sentenced today to 24 months in prison, for their respective roles in separate but concurrent multiyear conspiracies focused on evading their business tax obligations through bribes to a former employee of the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue (OTR).

WASHINGTON – A federal jury convicted a Puerto Rico legislator and her husband today for engaging in a years-long theft, bribery, and kickback conspiracy scheme to fraudulently inflate the salary of a legislative assistant in exchange for a portion of the assistant’s inflated salary.