FBI arrests California man in Skid Row ballot petition fraud scheme

A California man was arrested Thursday on federal charges alleging he and two associates paid homeless residents of Los Angeles’ Skid Row to sign ballot initiative petitions using the stolen identities of registered voters, according to Fox News.

James Brass, 47, who allegedly goes by “Lord,” was taken into federal custody in Victorville, roughly 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles. He and two co-defendants, Courtney Price, 49, of Jacksonville, Florida, and Jateisha Herron, 33, of Boron, California, face a charge of conspiracy to commit identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony. Mr. Brass and Ms. Price face an additional identity fraud count. All three defendants are presumed innocent unless convicted.

Prosecutors allege that from February through August, the trio pulled the identities of registered California voters from a database, then paid Skid Row residents to copy that information onto ballot petitions and sign them in the voters’ names. Mr. Brass allegedly managed a team of circulators and collected signatures himself, federal prosecutors said, according to Fox News. A New York Post report cited by Victor Valley News states that Mr. Brass owns a company called Pinnacle Brass that was allegedly connected to the scheme; that detail has not been independently confirmed against the indictment itself.

Mr. Brass and Ms. Herron then allegedly signed declarations falsely swearing they had personally witnessed the voters sign the petitions. The petitions containing allegedly fraudulent signatures were submitted to petition coordinators, and Mr. Brass allegedly was paid about $41,600 by one petition management company, prosecutors said. Federal authorities have not identified which ballot initiative the petitions were meant to qualify, according to Patch. To qualify a measure for a 2026 California ballot, proponents needed 546,651 signatures for a proposed statute or 874,641 for a constitutional amendment.

“If you mess with our elections, the FBI will find you,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X.

Patrick Grandy, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, called the alleged scheme an effort to “undermine an essential pillar of our democracy and cause an undue burden on taxpayers.”

All three defendants face up to five years in prison per count if convicted. Mr. Brass was expected to appear in federal court in Riverside on Thursday.