A city councilor in Boston was arrested on Friday morning and charged with using someone on her staff to take thousands of dollars in public funding for her personal gain, according to federal officials.
The councilor, Tania Fernandes Anderson, has represented a central swath of the city since 2022. She was indicted on five counts of aiding and abetting wire fraud and one count of aiding and abetting theft from programs receiving federal funds, according to court documents.
“These six felony charges stem from an alleged kickback scheme that she orchestrated to obtain several thousand dollars of taxpayer money in exchange for a bribe she paid to a staffer,” Joshua Levy, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said in a news conference.
Ms. Fernandes Anderson did not respond to request for comment. Her attorney declined to comment.
She broke barriers when she was elected in 2021 as the council’s first Muslim member, as well as its first African immigrant — and formerly undocumented immigrant. (She moved to Boston from Cape Verde as a child.) A Democrat, she was first elected to a two-year term in November 2021 and won re-election last year.
Her district, which covers neighborhoods including Roxbury, Dorchester, the South End and Fenway, is historically one of the poorest and most diverse in the city.
According to court documents, Ms. Fernandes Anderson, 45, was facing financial difficulties in 2023, resulting in bank overdraft fees and missed car and rent payments.
Then she was fined $5,000 by the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission for hiring her sister and son for her staff the previous year, which violated city policy.
As a result, investigators said — and while she was still under investigation for hiring her relatives — Ms. Fernandes Anderson created a kickback scheme to help pay her debts that involved hiring another family member. The relative was not named in court documents. In an email alerting the city to the hiring, Ms. Fernandes Anderson specifically denied being related to the new staff member.
Then, according to the indictment, she awarded that staff member a bonus for previous volunteer work. It came out to about $10,000, after taxes and other fees, and was more than twice the total combined amount of the bonuses given to all other members of Ms. Fernandes Anderson’s staff.
Investigators said that she gave the bonus to her relative with the understanding that part of it would be returned to her. Text messages obtained by investigators and included in court documents show that the pair met in a bathroom at Boston City Hall in early June, where the staff member gave Ms. Fernandes Anderson $7,000 in cash.
“As alleged, not only were these taxpayers’ funds being stolen, but it was happening right in the building where she works,” Mr. Levy said. “I think it adds to the egregiousness of the conduct.”
At the news conference, Mr. Levy and other federal prosecutors declined to comment on whether the staff member who they said gave Ms. Fernandes Anderson the $7,000 would face charges.
Included in the indictment was the request that should Ms. Fernandes Anderson be convicted, she must forfeit all funds defrauded from the government. She is scheduled to appear before a federal judge Friday afternoon.
Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston, a fellow Democrat, said in a statement that she was urging Ms. Fernandes Anderson to resign.
“Like any member of the community, Councilor Fernandes Anderson has the right to a fair legal process,” Ms. Wu said in a statement. “But the serious nature of these charges undermine the public trust and will prevent her from effectively serving the city.”
Ms. Fernandes Anderson is the first Boston city councilor to be federally indicted since 2008.
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