Federal authorities arrested a Victorville man on Thursday, charging him and two others with paying people on Skid Row to sign petitions using the stolen identities of registered voters.
James Brass, 47, of Victorville allegedly managed a team of signature collectors and also collected signatures himself for ballot petitions used to shape California law, according to a federal indictment returned Wednesday. Prosecutors say Brass was also known by the nickname “Lord” and controlled a company named Pinnacle Brass LLC.
Brass is expected to make an initial appearance on Thursday afternoon in federal court in Riverside. A deputy federal public defender representing Brass did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Two petition circulators who allegedly worked for Brass, Courtney Price, 49, of Jacksonville, Fla., and Jateisha Herron, 33, of Boron, Calif., were also charged in the indictment. Price and Herron have not been arrested and could not be reached for comment.
All three are charged with conspiracy to commit identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony. Brass and Price are also charged with identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. If convicted, the defendants would face up to five years in prison for each count.
First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, who labeled the case on X as “California Election Fraud,” said the defendants “allegedly used people, including members of Skid Row’s vulnerable homeless population, to try to cover up their tracks.”
“The charged conduct undermines the confidence voters have in our election systems, and we will vigorously investigate and charge anyone involved,” Essayli said in a news release.
According to the indictment, the state Constitution provides “a means for citizens to bypass the state legislature and enact statutes and constitutional amendments directly through the initiative process.” To qualify an initiative for the ballot, the initiative’s proponent is “required to collect and submit a large number of signatures belonging to to registered voters who supported the measure.”
In order to secure the large number of signatures, proponents of initiatives typically hire petition management companies, according to the indictment.
From February to August of this year, Brass, Price and Herron allegedly used a database to identify registered California voters. Then, according to the indictment, Brass and Price would allegedly hand out the voters’ stolen identities and pay petition signers on Skid Row to copy the voters’ personal information onto ballot initiative petitions and fraudulently sign the petitions in those voters’ names.
Afterward, prosecutors allege, Brass and Herron signed declarations on the petitions, falsely declaring that they had witnessed the named registered voters sign and that each signature was, to the best of their knowledge, “the genuine signature of the person whose name it purports to be.”
The pair allegedly turned in the fraudulent petitions to several petition coordinators, in order to receive payments from a petition management company. Brass allegedly received around $41,600 from coordinators working with one such company.
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