Several bills filed by House and Senate Democrats would reform the state’s welfare agency, which remains plagued in scandal and criticism after it squandered at least $77 million in federal welfare funds.
The Mississippi welfare scandal, which has received broad scrutiny by Mississippi Today and news outlets across the nation, has ensnared several high-profile Republicans in the state.
The known misspending occurred over a period of several years in part because of lax reporting standards and requirements at the state and federal levels. Leaders of the Department of Human Services and politically powerful individuals who misspent the federal funds from 2016 to 2020 often did so within the bounds of existing state and federal regulations.
No Republican lawmaker has called for a hearing or filed a bill to reform the agency’s spending based on the legal and journalistic revelations of the scandal.
“How, after two full years, is a system that allowed this kind of wrongdoing to run rampant still without a plan to prevent it from happening again?” said Rep. Robert Johnson, the House Democratic leader from Natchez who filed a bill that would require a legislative watchdog to regularly probe the welfare agency’s spending of federal grants and subgrants. “Since that information came to light, our Republican colleagues have held no hearings and made no attempt to get to the bottom of how this could have happened and how we could prevent it from happening again.”
Here are the bills filed this session — all authored by Democrats — that would implement spending safeguards, prioritize the needs of low-income families, or create methods to regularly track how the agency spends its federal funds.
House Bill 184 & House Bill 188: Create a board to oversee Department of Human Services, taking the agency out of the sole oversight of the governor’s office
House Bill 463: Use the first $40 million of Mississippi’s $86.5 million TANF grant on child care
House Bill 502: Increase the monthly cash benefit amount of TANF
House Bill 613: Limit TANF grants to serve people below 200% of the federal poverty line
House Bill 774 & Senate Bill 2794: Transfer 30% of TANF funds to supplement the Child Care Development Fund, the block grant that provides child care vouchers to working parents
House Bill 971: Loosen eligibility for TANF applicants, including removing up front job search
House Bill 1054: Require legislative watchdog PEER to evaluate TANF subgrants
Senate Bill 2331: Remove the child support cooperation requirement for TANF and SNAP beneficiaries
Senate Bill 2806: Remove drug testing requirement for TANF recipients
Republican Sen. Melanie Sojourner of Natchez filed several bills that would increase restrictions on who can receive TANF and other welfare benefits, though these bills do not address the misspending allegations of the broader scandal. Those bills include Senate Bill 2804, which would prohibit TANF funds from going to people convicted of several felonies, and Senate Bill 2776, which would require TANF recipients to participate in community service programs.
Mississippi charter schools received $600,000 in grant funding from the federal government to use on technology and general supplies, the Charter School Authorizer Board announced Monday.
The money comes from the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, passed by Congress in December of last year, through a community project grant. In a press release, the authorizer board said the funding is the result of collaboration between the board and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Lisa Karmacharya, executive director of the authorizer board, said she was approached by Hyde-Smith’s office to submit a proposal for congressional funding.
“At the congressional level we have a lot of support,” Karmacharya said. “They’re always looking to see what they can do to help us, which in turn helps all the schools.”
Charter schools are free public schools that do not report to a school board like traditional public schools. Instead, they are governed by the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board. They have more flexibility for teachers and administrators when it comes to student instruction, and are funded by local school districts based on enrollment. There are currently 10 charter schools approved to operate in Mississippi.
Eligible schools are ones that added a grade in the 2022-23 school year, Karmacharya said. The funding will be divided into $150,000 grants to four schools.
The schools receiving this funding are:
Ambition Preparatory Charter School (K-4, Jackson)
Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School (K-6, Clarksdale)
Leflore Legacy Academy (6-8, Greenwood)
Midtown Public Charter School (4-8, Jackson)
Schools will learn more about the grant’s spending rules at a webinar later this month, but are generally authorized to use them for supplies and technology needs.
Amanda Johnson, executive director of Clarksdale Collegiate Public, said shehopes to use the funding for classroom furniture and supplies as the school expands into offering seventh grade next year.
Leflore Legacy Academy hopes to use the grant to update some chromebooks and purchase technology for its app-building and robotics classes, among others.
“It was great to learn that politicians, the U.S. Department of Education, and even our local Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board office are really looking into opportunities to fiscally support charter schools,” said Leflore Legacy Executive Director Tamala Boyd Shaw.
In a free event open to the public, investigative reporter Anna Wolfe will discuss her reporting on the Mississippi welfare scandal.
Delta State University’s event featuring Wolfe will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 31 in Jobe Hall Auditorium.
Wolfe’s series The Backchannel gained national attention in 2022 when she revealed text messages and emails between key players of the welfare scandal, including former NFL player Brett Favre and Gov. Phil Bryant.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center and Mississippi Baptist Medical Center are vying to run a burn center in Mississippi — and both are seeking lawmakers’ help to establish them.
Dr. Derek Culnan, the former medical director of the now-closed JMS Burn and Reconstruction Center at Merit Health Central in Jackson, said Merit gave him 30 days’ notice that the hospital would shut down the center because of financial strains brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and recruitment challenges. Culnan continued caring for existing patients and started talking to hospitals about how to open a new center — and fast.
“This is a state that has a need for this service, and I wasn’t going to quit on the people just because it was hard,” Culnan said.
The burn center at Merit Health Central — which was the only accredited center in the state — saw around 600 to 800 patients a month, according to employees who worked there.
Culnan, who completed a fellowship in burn surgery where he worked with adults and children at the University of Texas, struck a deal with Baptist in Jackson and got privileges at the hospital. When he was admitted to the staff, he began taking care of patients immediately, he said.
Dr. Derek Culnan, the former medical director of the now-closed JMS Burn and Reconstruction Center at Merit Health Central in Jackson, is trying to establish a burn center at Mississippi Baptist Medical Center in Jackson. Credit: Courtesy of Derek Culnan
“We’re not working at the scale we were working on at Merit quite yet, but I’m operating on somebody essentially every day,” he said.
Culnan, who says he is one of about 250 specially trained burn surgeons in the United States, also performed complex hand surgeries at the former center, which was the only hand replantation center in the state. Replantation is the surgical reattachment of a finger or hand.
Culnan’s operation has the backing of House Speaker Philip Gunn, who penned a bill that would award $12 million in one-time money to establish a burn center at Baptist.
Gunn said he was approached by Baptist and believes Mississippi needs a burn center, regardless of who runs it.
“It will all be worked out. There are a lot of different ways to go about that,” he said.
Officials with Baptist said to move forward with a burn center, they must acquire specialized equipment and additional intensive care capacity. Culnan is currently operating in standard operating rooms.
“As a result, we have reached out to our elected officials and shared that we are willing and capable of operating this service if we were successful in receiving one-time financial support for some of these costs,” said Bobbie Ware, chief executive officer of Mississippi Baptist Medical Center.
The hospital has not yet submitted its application for accreditation to the state Department of Health, a spokesperson said.
But at the same time, UMMC, the state’s only academic medical center, has been in pursuit of a burn center — despite a history of walking away from the opportunity.
After the burn center in Greenville closed in 2005, state lawmakers in 2006 approached then-vice chancellor of the University of Mississippi Medical Center Dr. Dan Jones about establishing a burn center at UMMC. Jones told Mississippi Today he asked lawmakers for a yearly commitment to help UMMC run the program, but lawmakers only offered one-time money.
UMMC walked away, citing financial constraints, but lawmakers nevertheless passed a bill in 2007, sans funding, authorizing the university to create the Mississippi Burn Center.
In September of last year, University of Mississippi Medical Center officials were mum about whether they planned to pursue opening a burn center following the closure of the center at Merit Health Central. They did say, however, they would increase their capabilities for care of such patients, but offered no specifics.
But UMMC officials have been quietly — and now more overtly — pursuing state funds to establish the burn center. Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the medical school, spoke in front of an appropriations subcommittee at the beginning of the session, and a bill by Sen. John Polk brings forward the code section from 2007 that authorized UMMC to create the Mississippi Burn Center. Lawmakers could use Polk’s bill to appropriate money and make other amendments to the law.
Polk told Mississippi Today he’s made no decision on which hospital he supports establishing a burn center.
“The (burn center) legislation was last looked at in 2007 best I can tell. This is a whole new Legislature,” said Polk. “All kinds of things have changed. We need to bring legislation forward to study it to see if we need to make some changes.”
It’s unclear how much UMMC is asking lawmakers for and if the money would be recurring. UMMC doesn’t have any outside funding for the center at the time, Dr. Alan Jones, associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs, said at a press conference Friday.
He referenced the Mississippi Burn Care Fund, which runs anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million each year, and the hope UMMC will have access to that once it receives accreditation from the Health Department, which manages the fund.
UMMC announced it would be establishing its own burn center one day after submitting its application for accreditation to the Health Department. Dr. Peter Arnold, a plastic surgeon, has been named as the medical director.
UMMC officials say Arnold’s past experience treating burn patients qualifies him for the position, which regulations say must be filled by a physician who has completed a burn fellowship or who has spent two of the previous five years treating burn patients.
Emergency Medicine resident Dr. Andrew Garza, left, pharmacist Stephanie Tesseneer, background, and respiratory therapist Charles Patton stock supplies in a trauma room in the Adult Emergency Department at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Credit: UMMC
“Dr. Arnold … has had extensive training and experience in caring for patients with acute burns and complex wounds in his nearly 20-year career,” said Jones. “He is assisted at the Mississippi Burn Center by five other highly qualified, expertly trained plastic surgeons, all of whom have significant experience treating pediatric and adult acutely burned patients.”
Jones also told media at a press conference Friday that the hospital has “the necessary infrastructure in place” but will need to make additional hires, including around 30 nurses trained specifically in burn care.
“That won’t be immediately. Over time, it will grow,” said Jones.
He also said they will not have to add additional beds to accommodate running a burn center. Currently, burn patients are being treated on a regular unit in the hospital.
Jones said the university has treated about 75 burn patients through the emergency room in the past four months.
“But as the volume grows, we’ve identified a dedicated space that’s actually ready to go. So after this approval (by the Health Department) has taken place, we’ll begin to operationalize,” he said.
Editor’s note: Kate Royals, Mississippi Today’s community health editor since January 2022, worked as a writer/editor for UMMC’s Office of Communications from November 2018 through August 2020, writing press releases and features about the medical center’s schools of dentistry and nursing.
A proposal that would substantially overhaul how the state doles out money to help Mississippians pay for college was presented to a joint hearing of lawmakers on Tuesday.
Jennifer Rogers, the director of the Office of Student Financial Aid, told lawmakers that she does not believe a “perfect plan” exists, but she can’t think of a proposal that has consensus and “would advance the state more than this one does.”
She credited this support to the closed-door task force that created the proposal. Last year, the Woodward Hines Education Foundation, a nonprofit, invited public officials from higher education and workforce development to participate with the goal of redesigning state financial aid. Student recipients of state financial aid were not invited to attend.
If the wide-ranging proposal becomes law, it would be the first time that lawmakers have updated Mississippi’s undergraduate grant aid programs since they were created in the late 1990s. The committees plan to consider two identical bills based on this proposal later this week.
Rep. Donnie Scoggin, R-Ellisville, the vice-chairman of the House Colleges and Universities Committee, said the goal of the bill is “simply to try to get more people into the workforce.”
He speculated Tuesday’s meeting was the first time the House and Senate committees ever held a joint meeting, signaling broad legislative support for this year’s proposal after prior efforts to redesign state financial aid have failed to get off the ground.
The Mississippi Eminent Scholars Grant (MESG), the state’s only merit-based program with the primary purpose of rewarding academic achievement — and the most racially inequitable program — is the only state aid program that would remain untouched. The task force didn’t propose changes to MESG, Rogers told the committee, recognizing it has “broad political support.”
The bill seeks to reduce the amount of money that Mississippi spends on its only grant aimed at helping low-income students afford college — the Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students, or HELP grant — while expanding the Mississippi Resident Assistance Tuition Grant (MTAG).
It proposes kicking an additional $18 million in state funds to MTAG but lowering spending on the HELP grant by $7 million.
As written, the bills would reduce awards made under the HELP grant, which currently pays for all four years of college, no matter the institution a recipient chooses to attend. Officials are continuing to target spending on the HELP grant even though the cost, which had been increasing over the last decade, appears to be reaching a cliff, according to OSFA’s annual report this year.
HELP recipients, by and large, choose to spend the generous grant at four-year universities, not community colleges. The growing cost of tuition at the universities is one reason why the state spends the most money on this grant each year. But the bills’ changes aim to push more recipients toward community college by turning the HELP grant into what’s commonly called a “2+2 program.”
Awards for freshmen and sophomores would be lowered to the average cost of tuition at the community colleges, even if recipients decide to attend a four-year university. Juniors and seniors would receive the average cost of university tuition, an attempt to encourage them to transfer.
This way, the HELP grant would have reduced buying power at the universities, increasing the likelihood that low-income students would initially choose community colleges as the more affordable option.
While this move would save the state of Mississippi money, education policy experts told Mississippi Today that it also likely means the rate at which low-income recipients graduate from public universities would plummet.
“Cutting HELP in a way that directs talented low-income students to community colleges is definitely problematic,” said Sandy Baum, a fellow at the Urban Institute who has studied Mississippi’s state financial aid policies.
Scoggin acknowledged that with the changes, HELP recipients “may very well just stay at the community college and not transfer” to university but he speculated that would depend on a student’s degree field.
Philip Bonfanti, the executive vice president of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and a member of the task force, said that he believes Mississippians transfer out of community college at a higher rate than the national average.
According to federal data, MGCCC’s transfer-out rate is 11% — less than the national average.
Bonfanti emphasized the changes to HELP are fiscally responsible. HELP students who wanted to go directly to university could supplement the new, lowered award amount with the Pell Grant or institutional or private scholarships.
“No student loses access to higher education because of this proposed change,” he said, “but it almost cuts the HELP program in half.”
Rep. Lataisha Jackson, D-Como,asked if the task force considered lowering the ACT requirement to the state average of 17 so more students could qualify. Right now, HELP recipients have to get at least a 20.
“I don’t think there was any objection to it,” Bonfanti replied. “I think it was a monetary decision.”
Lawmakers also discussed the proposed changes to MTAG.
The number of students served by MTAG would increase from 17,000 to 34,000, according to HCM Strategists, a consulting firm hired by Woodward Hines to assist the task force.
Under the bills, eligibility for MTAG would broaden so that Pell Grant recipients would no longer be excluded by statute, part-time students could qualify, and the requirement of a 15 or higher on the ACT would be dropped.
Award amounts would increase to $1,000 for community college students and $2,000 for university students.
Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, asked if it was fair to MESG recipients for MTAG awards to increase.
“So if you’re an Eminent Scholar, you only get $500 more than a student that breathes air,” he said, referring to the accessible requirements for MTAG. “We’re trying to keep Eminent Scholars in Mississippi.”
“I think it looks a little awkward,” he added.
MTAG would also be retooled in an effort to incentivize students to pick degrees that serve the state’s workforce needs as identified by Accelerate MS. Students who choose “high value pathways” would receive a $500 bonus.
Toren Ballard, K-12 policy director for Mississippi First, said the bills would result in a “huge shift” in resources away from lower-income students.
Ballard added that MTAG is not an efficient use of state resources, citing one study requested by the Office of Student Financial Aid that showed the grant does not have a statistically significant impact on if students obtain a college degree.
“At the end of the day, HELP is need-based, MESG is merit-based,” he said. “We can argue about which one of those should take precedence. But MTAG is nothing-based. It’s a hand out. That’s all it is.”
An extra $500 is likely not enough money to change students’ behavior, said Baum, the Urban Institute fellow.
“The idea that students will change their degree programs for $500 is questionable to begin with — and probably a bad idea,” she said.
Baum added that the state’s priorities of increasing educational attainment to 55% by 2030 are undercut by the lack of changes to MESG.
“In order to be more effective in increasing educational attainment, the system would have to stop showing so much favor to high-achieving students,” she said. “But I guess that is unlikely to happen any time soon.”
Editor’s note: The Woodward Hines Education Foundation is a Mississippi Today donor.
Longtime state Sen. Chris McDaniel on social media late Monday said he’ll announce his campaign plans Jan. 30 at events in Jackson and in Biloxi, leading most observers to believe he’s going to challenge incumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.
Asked for comments or further info on his announcement Monday night, the Republican from Ellisville joked in a text, “I’m thinking (of running for) sheriff. :-)”
In a lengthy interview with Mississippi Today last week, the four-term incumbent senator said he was still undecided about challenging Hosemann, but sounded like a man gearing up for a campaign. He’s been traveling the state for months speaking to various political and civic groups and is co-head of a PAC that has been actively fundraising.
Usually on the outs with the Senate GOP leadership and back-benched for much of his tenure there, McDaniel has not seemed enthusiastic about his current seat for years as he looked to bigger offices.
“Yes, we’ve done polling,” McDaniel said. “My name ID is good. My favorability is good, and (Hosemann’s) unfavorability is higher than mine … Any politician in this state who is challenged from the right is vulnerable in this current environment.”
More than a decade ago, with the rise of the Tea Party, McDaniel became a leader of the far-right GOP and libertarians in Mississippi. In 2014, he made a seismic challenge of longtime Republican U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran. McDaniel, with financial support from out of state conservative groups and the state’s first true social media bombardment campaign, led the late Cochran in the first GOP primary vote, then narrowly lost in a runoff.
McDaniel’s run shook the Republican establishment in Mississippi, and has been credited by many as the catalyst for a large shift to the right in state Republican politics. McDaniel himself has said, “I was Donald Trump in Mississippi before Donald Trump.”
McDaniel ran for U.S. Senate again in 2018, but lost with only 16% of the vote in a nonpartisan, four-way race. Despite his declared loyalty to Trump, the then-president endorsed Cindy Hyde-Smith, who won the Senate seat.
Many in the GOP then wrote McDaniel off as a fringe candidate with only a small, albeit vocal and loyal, base. But McDaniel has mended fences at least with some in the state’s GOP, including his former political foe Gov. Tate Reeves. In 2019, McDaniel’s surprise endorsement of Reeves appeared to help Reeves garner more of the ultra conservative vote and helped him win a tough Republican primary.
McDaniel said his conservative base is strong and large, and more moderate Republicans are foolhardy to say otherwise.
“They tell themselves that so they can sleep better at night,” McDaniel said. “(His base) is going to exceed 40% on any given day in a Republican primary … Nobody thought Trump had a base, either.”
McDaniel, who serves in the Senate Hosemann oversees as lieutenant governor, has blasted Hosemann as too liberal and questioned his Republican bona fides. So far, Hosemann has not taken the bait and declined comment on McDaniel and his brickbats.
“This is the same Delbert Hosemann who endorsed Ray Mabus instead of Kirk Fordice (for governor). This is the same Delbert Hosemann who endorsed Mitt Romney instead of Donald Trump,” McDaniel said. “There’s consistency there throughout his career where he’s been not simply moderate, but more liberal than moderate … If people get wind of that, yes, he’s vulnerable. The cute commercials are one thing, and they are really clever. But the truth is out there, and it’s not the little lady on the bench, it’s his record.”
McDaniel’s improved relationship with Reeves has had many political observers speculating that Reeves, who has clashed often with Hosemann, is helping and urging McDaniel to run. Both McDaniel and the Reeves camp have denied this. A sitting Republican governor is de facto head of the MSGOP, and helping draft a challenge of a fellow incumbent Republican would be considered unsportsmanlike in political circles.
“(Reeves) has got his own races to run,” McDaniel said. “We haven’t discussed it, and we each have to, in some respects, stay in our own lanes. I consider him a friend, and I chalk our past differences up to misinterpretations on my part.”
McDaniel also refuted widespread rumors that he’s helping draft right-wing challengers of some of his fellow state senators.
“No, that’s not something I’m doing,” McDaniel said. “I can’t be playing checkers all over the state like that.”
But McDaniel said he does not feel as ostracized by the GOP machine as he did when he challenged the status quo with Cochran in 2014.
“I’ve gotten calls from all over — probably two dozen consultants offering to help,” McDaniel said. “These are options I’ve never had before. If anyone wants to help me, they can give me a call.”
McDaniel has in the past struggled to raise campaign money inside Mississippi, and he said he knows Hosemann will be well-funded and “incumbents, they try to clamp down fast on that, with threats, holding contracts over people’s heads.” But he said he’s confident he could raise enough money for a successful challenge.
Plus, McDaniel said social media has helped level the playing field on campaign finances, and he has a strong digital presence, including 305,000 followers on Facebook. In numerous comments on his announcement Monday, many followers said they support him. Many said they would attend his announcement if they lived in Mississippi. Some urged him to run for governor, or for U.S. Senate again.
One urged him, “Stream it live and break the internet!”
A group of ill-advised businessmen and investors, including one of Mississippi’s own star athletes and former NFL player Jerrell Powe, were done being jerked around.
Several of them hopped on a conference call the afternoon of Wednesday, Jan. 11. On the line was a guy they call the ultimate con artist, 28-year-old Bryce Mathis.
Everyone on the phone agreed: Mathis owed them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nearly a year of lies had finally caught up to him.
“We were all just like, ‘Look, we want our money back, Bryce. We want our money back,’” said Rob Howard, an investor in Mathis’ medical marijuana start-up and one of the individuals on the call. “And then he said, you know, ‘I just wanna make this right. I’m tired of doing all this stuff. I just wanna come clean and be done with this. It’s too stressful.’”
During the call, Mathis, Powe and a marijuana grower from California were traveling in a rented Tesla from the southeast Mississippi town of Laurel to the Chase Bank in Ridgeland, the Jackson suburb 100 miles away, where they said Mathis told them he’d stashed their money.
They arrived after the bank closed and decided to stay at a hotel in Pearl – near a Tesla charging station – so they could go first thing in the morning.
The next day, Ridgeland police officers arrested Powe and the grower, Gavin Bates, for allegedly kidnapping Mathis and taking him to withdraw the money against his will.
“If this case gets fully investigated, it’s going to turn out to be much different than what the police think it is,” said Powe’s attorney, Tom Fortner.
The funds in the Chase account weren’t enough to cover the debts. Several of the creditors believe the kidnapping allegation is just another one of Mathis’ clever stunts.
But Ridgeland Municipal Court prosecutor Boty McDonald said he has the written communication to prove the vigilante efforts of the aggrieved investors constitute a felony.
“The fact that someone may owe you money does not allow you to kidnap them to collect your debt,” McDonald said.
The alleged kidnappers apparently didn’t have any restraints, nor did they wield a weapon. Not a material one, anyway.
“Brute strength was the weapon,” McDonald said.
Mathis’ story goes that Powe – the 6-foot-2, 330-pound former nose tackle for the Ole Miss Rebels and later the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs – slept on top of Mathis’ legs in the hotel bed to prevent him from escaping in the night.
“When this becomes a Netflix series, it’s going to be Apple Dumpling Gang meets The Sopranos,” McDonald said.
Mathis, owner of a number of LLCs including Endless Esports, Endless Media and Chickasawhay Medical, the marijuana startup, is an Air Force veteran-turned-entrepreneur from Waynesboro, Mississippi, according to his online profiles. His primary business, Endless Holdings LLC, is not filed as a company in Mississippi.
“I believe that relationships are at the core of new ventures and have built a reputation of building meaningful connections resulting in a network of people with endless opportunity,” Mathis wrote on his Forbes Council profile.
Powe, 35, is from Buckatunna, another small town in Wayne County. The NCAA infamously denied the athlete, who was described as learning-disabled, eligibility to play at University of Mississippi three separate times – resulting in claims of discrimination against the association. He was drafted to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2011 and finished his college degree in 2018. People that know him describe Powe as a “gentle giant,” a shirt-off-his-back kind of guy, but in the media, his career has been marked by exaggerated claims that he can’t read and, now, kidnapping allegations.
Last year, despite the warnings from friends, Powe entered into business with Mathis, handing over an investment of $300,000 from him and other friends and athletes.
For the last few years, according to interviews Mississippi Today conducted with nine of his former associates, Mathis’ MO has gone something like this:
Mathis meets potential investors and pitches them on a business venture — anything from an oilfield services company; to a video gamer influencer brand; to a new medical marijuana grow facility near his tiny hometown in Wayne County.
“The kid’s a very good talker,” said Mark Amador, owner of an oil drilling company in Midland, Texas.
He takes their money — $50,000, $200,000 or $300,000 investments — and then the fun begins. Trips to California, rooms at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, Wagyu beef dinners, shopping sprees at Best Buy, to name a few.
“I worked hard for my $50,000 and when I give him my $50,000, he magically went to Hawaii two weeks later. Wonder how he got that money,” one of the investors who did not want to be named told Mississippi Today.
To dodge the people expecting quarterly dividends or salaries from him, Mathis would act like he was going to send them the money but then provide some vague excuse: the bank was closed, the wire didn’t go through, Venmo doesn’t work, or he went to the bank but there was a problem with his revolving credit account.
“It was always messed up, always not open or some crap,” said another former associate.
One time, after promising to pay for a business trip to Los Angeles, the former associate said Mathis gave him a flimsy Regions debit card to use on expenses. It declined every time. Another time, Mathis had Amador physically waiting at a bank for hours for a payment that never came. “I looked like an idiot,” he said.
“It’s always the same story,” Howard said.
To solve these problems, one of the consultants on Mathis’ Esports venture opened a bank account at Chase Bank that he could monitor. But he said Mathis used the same tricks not to wire the seed money into the account. The only transfer Mathis made into the account was for 40 cents, the consultant told Mississippi Today.
Over the past year, multiple people have left jobs to work for Mathis’ startups but were never paid, multiple sources said. One of the employees didn’t have money to buy his kids Christmas gifts this past year.
To keep each of his investors and employees from talking to each other and detecting his inconsistencies, they said Mathis bred distrust, fabricating disparaging remarks they’d said about each other.
Once they finally all connected and the jig was up, Mathis claimed one of his employees, the one who set up the Chase account, was connected to the drug cartel and that if he saw Mathis take out the money, the guy would kill his family.
Mathis’ alleged schemes never seem to take into account what will happen beyond the present moment. In an August column Mathis submitted as part of a subscription with Forbes Council, he wrote about how entrepreneurs can enjoy the “here and now,” about how “the time for happiness is today, not tomorrow.”
“Why is entrepreneurship so difficult?” he wrote. “Why does it seem that odds are perpetually stacked against you, and your own happiness is under attack? … You might say, ‘It’s me against the world,’ and while that might be true for some, you’ll likely learn along the way that this sort of excessive individualism can lead to even bigger challenges.”
Mathis did not respond to Mississippi Today’s text to a number provided for him or an inquiry on Twitter.
Mississippi Today spoke with more than half a dozen people who said Mathis either owed them money or failed to make promised investments. By their own tally, they estimate Mathis could owe a combined $1.2 million. In some cases, Mathis paid back his creditors, but only after they put immense pressure on Mathis, and even then, the money came from another individual.
“I threatened him with an ass whooping,” said yet another man, a contractor who eventually received a check, not from Mathis but another business partner, months after completing work for him.
That story echoes charges Mathis faced in Covington County for defrauding Rutland Lumber Co. of $66,000 worth of lumber in 2017. A statement of fact filed in court states that after delivering the lumber, a salesman for the company had to contact Mathis repeatedly to get payment. Mathis told him he could pick up the checks at his office in Hattiesburg, but when the salesman got there, there was no office at the address. Finally, Mathis forked over the checks, but they either bounced or the bank account was closed.
A grand jury indicted Mathis for false pretenses and mail fraud in 2019, but the charges were dropped — what’s called a nolle pros — after Mathis paid what he owed, court records show.
The people who have fallen for Mathis’ alleged scams come from all over the country — west Texas, Los Angeles, Seattle, south Florida, Pennsylvania. They all say the same thing: Bryce Mathis is not to be trusted.
“The details are truly unbelievable, I nearly got entangled in a $20 million cannabis related fraud, he has played a significantly damaging role in a number of people’s lives,” one of Bryce’s prospective business partners, Daniel Kauffman, wrote in an email to a reporter at Bloomberg last May. “I suspect he will successfully continue unless exposed, Bryce simply cannot help himself. He’s too good at lying not to do it.”
But when officers arrived at Chase Bank in Ridgeland on Jan. 12 – after Mathis told a teller that Powe had kidnapped him – they took the alleged conman’s word for it.
Powe was inside the bank during the alleged abduction, playing on Snapchat on his cellphone. The athlete told police his side of the story — that Mathis agreed to go to the bank to retrieve their money — but Fortner, the lawyer, said the officers “blindly accepted” Mathis’ version.
Officers arrested Powe and Bates, who was waiting in the Tesla during the incident, at the bank that Thursday. The pair remained in jail until a judge set bail, $100,000 a piece, and they each bonded out on Tuesday.
A couple days later, U.S. Marshals arrested another investor in the marijuana company, a Texas woman named Angie McLelland, on a fugitive warrant for conspiracy related to the alleged kidnapping. Later that night, officers also arrested an attorney close to Powe, Cooper Leggett, for conspiracy. Leggett is the counsel for the Wayne County Board of Supervisors, which was involved in helping launch the marijuana venture.
“That shows you what the Ridgeland Police Department is thinking,” Fortner said, “that anything this Bryce guy says, they’re acting on that, they’re trusting that, and that may be a real problem here.”
Other than Mathis’ account, Assistant Police Chief Tony Willridge declined to tell Mississippi Today what other evidence it used as the basis of the arrests, citing the ongoing investigation.
But McDonald said the backbone of their case, which they’re turning over to the Madison County District Attorney’s Office, “does not come from the mouth of Bryce.”
“It is based on what they all said and typed and texted,” McDonald said. “… It continues to amaze me what people will put in text messages and emails and voice messages.”
He declined to go into further detail. The case has not yet been presented to a grand jury.
Howard, from Pennsylvania, told Mississippi Today that Mathis had also invited him to come to Mississippi a few days before the alleged kidnapping so Mathis could give him a certified check. Howard had traveled to Mississippi twice before and both times, Mathis failed to hand over the money, so Howard refused to come this time.
“He told me to come down multiple times, ‘And we’ll go to the bank,’” Howard said. “… Was he trying to set me up too, get me to come down and get me wrapped up on all that stuff too? Like what was his plan?”
Mississippi Today spoke with five people who were on the Jan. 11 conference call. Each corroborated that Mathis said he wanted to go to the bank to settle up with them.
“Bryce said he’ll go over there and get this straight. He said too many people is getting pissed off and everything like that,” said Wade Lowery, one of the men on the call. “…That was the last I heard when I got off that phone and the next thing I know, they’ve got his (Powe’s) mugshot.”
Powe’s arrest appeared on many of the major news sites, as well as ESPN and Sports Illustrated.
The news story, like most in Mississippi, can’t escape race. The arrest itself occurred in a suburban area north of Jackson, in a county that was embroiled in racial profiling lawsuit not long ago.
Lowery painted a picture of the scene: “Before the TV cameras and all that, we already knew what had happened. He (Mathis) got to the bank and told them that he was getting kidnapped, you know, a white man coming in there with a black man. Of course. There we go. ‘He threatened to kill me, he’s kidnapping me,’ this and that, and there you go,” Lowery said. “That’s not the type of person Jerrell Powe is.”
“I think that the kidnapping shit was just another way for him (Mathis) not to pay nobody,” he added.
Now, most of Mathis’ former associates believe he’s fled Mississippi. They say he’s been using a blocked phone number. McDonald said he believes Mathis is in fear for his life and has good reason to be.
“He frauded them (the bank employees) and frauded the police department and just slipped out of the noose, so now he’s on the run, and it’s just a big mess,” said Angie McLelland’s husband, Colburn McClelland.
Another investor David Hensley concurred: “I think that was a smoke and mirrors to stop the questioning of Bryce and give him enough time to leave the area so his little secret wouldn’t be found out. He’s very creative.”
Another one of Mathis’ purported companies is Mathis Trading, a building materials supplier. Hensley said he bought thousands of dollars worth of metals from Mathis, but the goods never arrived. The fictitious truck driver pretended to get lost on his way to his company in Pennsylvania.
Hensley said he turned over the information to his local law enforcement and they are currently investigating Mathis.
“We’re not here to strong-arm people … We’re not a bunch of gangsters out here trying to get illegal money or illegal investments,” Hensley said. “We’re just hard-working American people and providing work for a lot of other families. Then you have a guy like this who comes along and tries to scam us.”
Una amplia mayoría de los habitantes de Mississippi a través de las líneas partidistas y demográficas apoya la expansión de Medicaid para brindar cobertura de salud a los trabajadores pobres, según una encuesta recientemente publicada de Mississippi Today/Siena College.
La encuesta mostró que el 80% de los encuestados, incluido el 70% de los republicanos, están muy de acuerdo o algo de acuerdo en que el estado debería “aceptar fondos federales para expandir Medicaid”.
Las cifras parecen mostrar un cambio continuo en el sentimiento de los votantes en lo que durante mucho tiempo ha sido una batalla partidista. Los gobernadores republicanos electos de Mississippi y otros líderes durante la última década han bloqueado la expansión de Medicaid a través de la Ley del Cuidado de Salud a Bajo Precio y los miles de millones de dólares federales que la acompañarían. Esta resistencia continúa incluso cuando los hospitales en dificultades y más ciudadanos en el estado más pobre e insalubre claman por ayuda.
“Sí, lo apoyo”, dijo Joy Cevera, de 60 años, una votante republicana de Oxford que dijo que en general apoya al gobernador Tate Reeves pero no está de acuerdo con él en la expansión de Medicaid. Varios encuestados acordaron hablar con Mississippi Today sobre sus respuestas.
Para Cevera, una cocinera jubilada por discapacidad, el tema es personal.
“Yo solía ser uno de los trabajadores pobres”, dijo. “Vi sufrir a mi hijo porque no podía pagarle la atención médica… Ahora tiene 35 años y todavía lo veo sufrir porque es uno de los trabajadores pobres. Tiene que haber algo hecho. Si otros estados pueden hacerlo, ¿por qué nosotros no?”.
Graphic: Bethany Atkinson
La encuesta mostró que grandes mayorías en todas las líneas partidistas y demográficas apoyan firmemente que los hospitales del estado, grandes y pequeños, estén adecuadamente financiados y una mayoría cree que el gobierno estatal tiene la responsabilidad de ayudar a los trabajadores pobres a pagar la atención médica básica. La gran mayoría, incluido el 91 % de los votantes republicanos, está de acuerdo en que todos los habitantes de Mississippi deberían tener acceso a una buena atención médica.
“Creo que tenemos la responsabilidad como sociedad de ayudar a la gente y, a veces, las personas a las que ayudas no son tus personas favoritas, pero es una lástima”, dijo Brad Dickey, de 58 años, un ingeniero de Southaven que dijo que vota por los republicanos. al menos el 90% del tiempo.
“El derecho a vivir es un derecho básico… Deberían ampliarlo. Somos un estado insalubre… Les digo a mis amigos que dicen que no quieren dar dinero a las personas que no trabajan o que no pueden pagar un seguro, ‘Sí, pero tienen hijos’.“Tienen que tener algo, de lo contrario, lo que hacen es ir a la sala de emergencias”, continuó Dickey. “Sería una atención mucho más asequible si se hiciera de otra manera. Estresa a los hospitales, y sí, terminamos pagándolo de todos modos”.
Nota del editor: la metodología de la encuesta y las tabulaciones cruzadas se pueden encontrar al final de esta historia. Haga clic aquí para leer más sobre nuestra asociación con el Siena College Research Institute.
Mississippi es uno de los 11 estados que rechazaron la expansión. La decisión significa que el estado rechaza alrededor de mil millones de dólares al año en fondos federales destinados a ayudar a los estados pobres a brindar atención médica y deja sin cobertura a hasta 300,000 trabajadores de Mississippi.
Mientras tanto, los funcionarios de salud dicen que 38 hospitales rurales están en peligro de cerrar, en gran parte debido al costo de brindar atención a pacientes indigentes. Algunos de esos hospitales son centros regionales de atención más grandes, como el Hospital Greenwood Leflore, e incluso los hospitales más grandes del área metropolitana tienen dificultades financieras debido a los costos de atención no compensados.
Pero el 14% de los votantes, incluido el 23% de los republicanos, según la encuesta, siguen oponiéndose a la expansión de Medicaid. Algunos de ellos, como el propietario de una pequeña empresa Joseph Allen, de 42 años, de Brandon, lo ven como una cuestión de equidad y que una gran parte del dinero de sus impuestos se destina a programas sociales o de ayuda social.
“Yo mismo pago mi propio seguro, y es mucho dinero”, dijo Allen. “… Para mí es como el mismo viejo disco rayado en Estados Unidos. Cuanto más pones, más te penalizan. Cuanto más trabajas, más toman”.
La votante independiente Michelle Dukes, de 52 años, ama de casa y cuidadora en Edwards, dijo que trabajar 15 años en el campo de los servicios de salud mental demostró que Medicaid es un programa defectuoso y que “el sistema debe arreglarse antes de expandirlo”.
Para algunos votantes, el apoyo a la expansión de Medicaid viene con advertencias y límites.
“Lo apoyo, pero de una manera muy específica”, dijo Robby Raymond, de 47 años, un operador de maquinaria pesada que apoya al gobernador Reeves y es amigo de él desde su ciudad natal en Florence.
“Creo que debemos hacer más para ayudar a los trabajadores pobres oa los jubilados”, dijo Raymond. “… Pero para las personas que pueden trabajar que no pueden y piensan que necesitan ayuda, lo que necesitan es un trabajo. Esa es nuestra gran perdición en todo este país, que no hacemos lo suficiente para ayudar a las personas que necesitan ayuda, y hacemos demasiado por las personas que no la necesitan… He tenido suerte y siempre he tenido un buen trabajo, ganaba buen dinero y tenía seguro. Pero hay mucha gente que conozco que lucha.
“No estoy de acuerdo con Tate Reeves (sobre la expansión de Medicaid), pero todavía hablo con él un par de veces al año, y sé que también comparte mi punto de vista de que debemos hacer más para ayudar a nuestros jubilados y trabajadores pobres”. dijo Raimundo.
Tim Moore, presidente de la Asociación de Hospitales de Mississippi y defensor de la expansión de Medicaid, dijo que no estaba sorprendido de ver un apoyo generalizado para la expansión, pero que las cifras eran un poco más altas de lo que esperaba.
“Durante mucho tiempo pensé que es al menos 65%-70%, simplemente debido a los altos números que obtuvimos en nuestra última encuesta solo con votantes republicanos”, dijo Moore. “Una abrumadora mayoría de los habitantes de Misisipí lo apoya. No sé cómo nuestro liderazgo ignora eso”.
Moore dijo que la MHA participó en las encuestas de 2019, preparándose para una campaña de iniciativa electoral para que los votantes forzaran la expansión de Medicaid ante la reticencia legislativa. Pero la Corte Suprema del estado, en un fallo sobre la marihuana medicinal, invalidó el sistema de iniciativa electoral del estado y los legisladores aún tienen que restaurar ese derecho a los votantes.
Moore señaló que Dakota del Sur, al igual que Mississippi, resistió durante mucho tiempo la expansión de Medicaid debido a la política partidista. Dakota del Sur votó 56% contra 44% el año pasado para expandir Medicaid.
“Dakota del Sur también es un estado muy rojo”, dijo Moore. “Su gobernadora hizo una declaración pública de que no lo apoyaba, pero si eso es lo que querían los habitantes de Dakota del Sur, ella lo implementaría.
“Estoy muy alentado por los números que refleja esta nueva encuesta”, dijo Moore. “Mississippi está viendo la necesidad de un cambio”.
El representante estatal Tracy Arnold, un republicano conservador de Booneville, dijo que no está sorprendido por el apoyo que mostró la encuesta para la expansión de Medicaid.
Recientemente realizó una encuesta informal de sus electores en Facebook y dijo que estima que el apoyo era del 90% al 95%, “siempre y cuando se hable de los trabajadores pobres”.
“No me sorprende, porque esa es la única parte de nuestra sociedad que queda fuera de todo: los trabajadores y los propietarios de pequeñas empresas”, dijo Arnold. Arnold dijo que está interesado en una expansión “algún tipo de híbrido”, tal vez similar a la promulgada por Arkansas.
“Tal vez tener algo de compra, como un seguro normal con copago para visitas y medicamentos, o incluso un cupón que les permita comprar un seguro en el mercado privado”, dijo Arnold. Dijo que también podría apoyar ayudar a las personas mayores que tienen dificultades para pagar el seguro complementario de Medicare.
Arnold dijo que aunque el liderazgo ha frustrado la votación o el debate sobre la expansión de Medicaid en los últimos años, sospecha que al menos se debatirá cuando se planteen otros temas, como el impulso del Senado para ampliar la cobertura posparto para las madres.
“Creo que la gente tiene la mente un poco más abierta de lo que era”, dijo Arnold. “Tenemos una cantidad sustancial de ingresos ahora. Tenemos que ayudar a salvar nuestros hospitales en apuros, y esto no solo les daría más fondos a los hospitales, sino que también ayudaría a los ciudadanos contribuyentes en apuros.
“Solo quedan unos pocos estados que han hecho esto, y parece estar brindando algunos beneficios y servicios donde lo han hecho”, dijo Arnold. “… Mi posición es que escucharé a las personas que represento”.
La encuesta del Mississippi Today/Siena College Research Institute de 821 votantes registrados se realizó del 8 al 12 de enero y tiene un margen de error general de +/- 4,6 puntos porcentuales. Siena tiene una calificación A en el análisis de encuestadores de FiveThirtyEight.
U.S. Rep. Michael Guest, a Republican who represents Mississippi’s 3rd Congressional District, will chair the House Ethics Committee.
Guest, elected in 2019 to replace former Rep. Gregg Harper, will oversee the committee that investigates alleged violations of the House rules by representatives and staff, among other duties.
“It’s necessary that the People’s House maintain the ethical standards of the people who elected us,” Guest said in a statement. “I’m honored to lead the committee that will maintain the level of integrity that the American people expect from their representatives.”
The House Ethics Committee is made up of 10 total members — five of each party, which is unusual in the lower chamber. The party with majority control of the House gets to name its chair.
Guest had previously served as ranking member of the committee in the last Congress, when Democrats still enjoyed a majority. He was promoted to ranking member in August 2022 after Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana died in a car accident.
Last week, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy named Guest to the powerful House Appropriations Committee — a key appointment that will stand to benefit Mississippi, the state that receives the most federal funding.
Guest carries on a long legacy of Mississippians serving on appropriations committees in both chambers of Congress. Former U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo, who was defeated by Mike Ezell the 2022 election, previously served on the House Appropriations Committee.
