A federal judge sentenced former Charlotte councilwoman Tiawana Brown to 10 months in prison for a felony COVID fraud conspiracy – a decision he second-guessed after an outburst at the end of Tuesday morning’s three-hour hearing.
Brown appeared beside her daughters as U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell reprimanded the women for stealing, applauded their perseverance and chastised the government’s attorney for recommending sentences that were too light.
A combination of wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy charges filed last year detailed how Brown and her two daughters submitted false documents and employee records to get government pandemic relief money in 2020 and 2021. According to court documents, Brown used the taxpayer-funded loans on a throne, horse-drawn carriage and other lavish details for her 50th birthday party, and the family together used it on Louis Vuitton merchandise.
The expenses were “frivolous beyond measure,” Bell said at the Tuesday sentencing inside uptown’s U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. Each woman walked into the fourth-floor courtroom without the luxury bags they wore to earlier hearings.
As Bell readied to sentence the family on the conspiracy charges they admitted to in plea deals earlier this year, Brown pressed her palms into a prayer, looked to the ceiling and raised her red painted fingertips above her head. Bell sentenced Brown to prison while sparing Tijema Brown, 32, and Antoinette Rouse, 34, with two years of probation with four months of house arrest. The Trump-appointed judge also ruled each woman was responsible for paying the government back $137,280.09, even though they each received different amounts of that sum.
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