The Jackson FBI sting is not the first time the feds used a yacht, strip club to lure alleged bribery
This sting that brought bribery charges against Jackson officials this week is far from the first time the FBI has used a yacht and a strip club in Miami in an undercover operation.
Don’t count on it being the last.
What started in 1978 as an FBI investigation into mobsters stealing art in New York City soon led to the shores of Jersey, the halls of Congress and, yes, the beaches of Miami.
After customs agents seized a drug dealer’s boat, the FBI used the 65-foot Cheoy Lee yacht, named “The Left Hand,” to hold parties with politicians.
“It gleamed with the predictable varnished parquet decks, teak paneling — and a wide variety of eavesdropping and recording devices,” Time magazine reported.
A phony Arab sheik handed out bribes for sponsoring legislation. Six congressmen took the bait, including U.S. Rep. John J. Jenrette Jr, who declared, “I’ve got larceny in my blood.”
By the end, 19 had been convicted, including those congressmen, a U.S. senator, a New Jersey mayor and other corrupt officials in Abscam, the FBI codename for the operation.
FBI agents used the yacht again in a 1980 operation involving agent Joseph Pistone, who pretended to be an expert jewel thief named Donnie Brasco.
Pistone’s cover was almost blown when a mob leader spotted an article in Time magazine on the Abscam tale that showed the picture of the yacht the FBI used to entertain congressmen.
Pistone’s story was depicted in the 1997 film, “Donnie Brasco,” featuring Johnny Depp and Al Pacino.
The Abscam operation had long faded from the headlines when the 2013 film, “American Hustle,” portrayed the real-life investigation.
The movie starring Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper brought new attention to the FBI operation, which resulted in convictions and prison terms for 19 people.
Miami yachts and strip clubs have continued to arise in FBI undercover investigations, including one that bears a striking resemblance to the case in Jackson.
Testimony revealed that the FBI’s Cincinnati office spent more than $100,000 in 2018 to fly Cincinnati City Council member Jeff Pastor to Miami and treat him to expensive liquor, a yacht cruise and Tootsie’s Cabaret, a high-end, fully nude strip club memorialized in a 2015 song by Drake.
Pastor was accused of collecting $55,000 in bribes, much of it in cash. He was quoted as telling undercover agents that he should be paid $200,000 for his help and that he wanted a “monthly retainer” for his assistance.
FBI agents posed as developers, aided by developer Chinedum Ndukwe, a former safety for the Cincinnati Bengals who served as an undercover informant.
A federal grand jury indicted Pastor and two other Cincinnati City Council members in a pay-to-play scheme in exchange for votes or support for development projects. The main one was the city’s dilapidated Convention Place Mall, which, like downtown Jackson, had fallen on hard times.
“Where do you guys find these LLCs?” then-council member P.G. Sittenfeld asked an undercover FBI agent. “Do I not want to know?”
“Yeah, you probably don’t,” the agent replied.
“As long as it’s like…,” Sittenfeld said.
“Yeah, it’ll pass, it’ll pass the muster test,” the agent said.
“As long as it passes muster and like a person with a name,” Sittenfeld said. “My political enemies, like, not to freak you guys, but they like to poke around this s—.”
Sittenfeld, who was considered the favorite to serve as Cincinnati’s next mayor, was quoted as saying he could “deliver the votes.”
He, Pastor and another city council member were each sentenced to between one and two years in prison. Sittenfeld is appealing his jury conviction.
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Yacht, strip club, bags of cash: The traveling FBI sting that set the stage for bribery charges against Jackson officials
Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba boarded a yacht off the coast of Florida with the top prosecutor in charge of fighting crime in his city and several rowdy out-of-state men who said they wanted to drop millions revitalizing downtown.
Lumumba, who is running for reelection in 2025, had planned to wear his normal suit and tie during this fundraising trip to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the mayor’s spokesperson said, but the men assured him it was a casual affair. He opted for dark jeans and a black button-up.
As they cruised through the Atlantic on a boat stocked with expensive booze in April, the supposed developers were angling to arrange a deal between Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens and the mayor.
The investor group, known as Facility Solutions Team, had given Owens $50,000 that he divvied up into campaign checks to Lumumba from multiple donors.
Owens, who moonlights as a businessman and consultant, had been working for the company since the previous year to entice local officials to support their proposal for a long-welcomed downtown hotel complex in the capital city.
Liquor flowed at Owens’ downtown tobacco lounge where the men first met and regularly spent time in a room hidden behind a bookcase door. A video shows one of the gregarious real estate moguls dancing to club music at the well-lit, nearly empty bar. In Miami, the developers took the mayor and district attorney to a 76,000-square-foot “full nude” cabaret called Tootsie’s and indulged in evening cigars.
But the high-rollers weren’t who they appeared to be. They were FBI agents and an informant using a familiar playbook — masquerading as the same Goodfellas-esque characters, flaunting the same yacht and dropping thousands of taxpayer funds at the same strip club — they’ve used to bust public officials in other cities. One of the undercover cops was publicly condemned by the FBI for having a sexual relationship inside a Cincinnati penthouse suite that the government rented as part of their sting there, according to news reports.
By the time Lumumba and Owens took the sunset cruise, the city had already opened a bid soliciting information from prospective developers for the downtown project. According to the feds, the mayor could help them by shortening the time to respond, hopefully hurting the competition.
From the yacht, Lumumba made the call to change the deadline. One of the undercover agents handed the mayor the campaign checks while they were still on the boat, prosecutors allege.
A few days later, prosecutors alleged Lumumba took out nearly $15,000 of that by writing checks from his campaign to himself and cashing them.
Federal indictments against Owens and Lumumba unsealed Thursday accuse them of several counts including conspiracy, bribery, racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering — some of which come with possible sentences up to 20 years. Owens is also accused of making false statements to the FBI.
Lumumba announced the indictment Wednesday before it was unsealed, denying the allegations and calling the case “political prosecution.” They both pleaded not guilty Thursday.
The agents were drawn to Mississippi’s capital as early as December of 2022 after years of suspected corruption among its leaders. And they recorded.
“I don’t give a shit where the money comes from. It can come from blood diamonds in Africa, I don’t give a fucking shit,” Owens said, according to the indictment, during one of their raucous meetings at his cigar shop. “I’m a whole DA.”
“We can take dope boy money,” he added, “… but I need to clean it and spread it.”
Outside the federal courthouse Thursday, Owens described his quotes in the indictment as “cherry-picked,” and, echoing President-elect Donald Trump’s rationale for his reported vulgarity from 2016, “drunken, locker room banter.”
Jackson City Council member Aaron Banks, who allegedly took cash bribes and favors in exchange for his future vote on the development, also pleaded not guilty in the case on Thursday. He did not speak with reporters.
READ MORE: The full indictment against Owens, Lumumba, and Banks
Another city council member Angelique Lee was the first to resign and plead guilty in August to her part in the scheme, including a $6,000 FBI-funded shopping spree for, among other things, Valentino sandals and a Christian Louboutin tote bag. Owens’ cousin and business associate, Sherik “Marve” Smith, also pleaded guilty in October to acting as a go-between for the district attorney with both Lumumba and Banks.
This kind of political corruption not only erodes public trust, it “hampers economic development and further exacerbates inequality,” according to global anti-corruption coalition Transparency International.
When officials choose contracts with companies based on bribes and kickbacks rather than fair competition, it can increase the costs and reduce the quality of basic services and goods. In communities already facing high poverty, which are more susceptible to corruption, people “don’t necessarily have time to hold their government to account because they don’t have the resources or the ability to do so,” said Transparency International researcher Caitlin Maslen.
“So it just further drives their vulnerability, and of course, at the end of the day, the people who are benefitting from that are corrupt public officials,” Maslen said.
Jackson has made national headlines in recent years for its crumbling infrastructure, which Lumumba largely inherited when he took office in 2017 and has left residents without clean water — or sometimes without water at all — at their faucets.
Partly to blame was a highly political and badly bungled $90 million water billing and meter installation contract with German-based manufacturer Siemens signed a decade earlier, and the city got its money back through a court settlement in 2020. But the lawyer, one of Lumumba’s top political donors, took $30 million of that.
The Capital City caught the eye of federal authorities during a years-long conflict between the mayor and council starting in 2021 over selecting a garbage collection vendor, resulting in recurring emergency contracts.
Once in the spring of 2023, residents didn’t see their trash picked up for 17 days.
The mayor lobbed bribery allegations against council members to explain the stalemate and the FBI reportedly examined the ordeal.
If federal criminal investigators gathered evidence of corruption related to the garbage procurement or the other attention-grabbing snafus in city government in recent years, they haven’t released it to the public.
Instead, the FBI decided to concoct its own bribery scheme.
The agents found an obvious weakness: The city’s desire to build a hotel complex downtown on Pascagoula Street on three empty parcels across from the 15-year-old convention center — a long running saga of questionable characters, financial miscalculations and bidding missteps.
In a separate investigation, the FBI had already found that Jackson’s previous mayor took $80,000 in donations and gifts from a contractor who bid on the same project, according to transcripts from a 2022 trial in Atlanta. They never charged him.
Getting Owens to partner with FST, their development front, proved crucial to the undercover agents’ plan. Owens bragged to them that he and his cousin “‘own enough of the city’ and that he had ‘a bag of fucking information on all the city councilmen’ that allowed him to ‘get votes approved,’” according to the indictment.
The district attorney and mayor, both Democrats, have a friendship. Owens lent an air of credibility to the undercover scheme that without, local politicians may have never entertained the men.
At a Feb. 12 dinner Owens arranged to introduce Lumumba to his partners, the district attorney said, “I’ve done background checks. They’re not FBI by the way,” according to the indictment.
To secure indictments, the agents had to provide the officials a benefit — whether cash, fancy clothes, a job for a family member, a private driver, or simply a campaign contribution — and record them agreeing to take some official act, however insignificant to their company actually securing a deal with the city.
In late March, Owens and the agents took Lee, who represented northwest Jackson on the city council, out to dinner at Pulito Osteria Italian restaurant in Belhaven. As they were leaving, one of the agents handed Lee a bag of $3,000 in cash. “Oh my god,” Lee said, according to a recording transcript read in court. “… I’m not reporting this.”
“I mean it’s cash, why would you report it? Don’t report it,” the FBI agent responded, then thanked Lee for her support for their project.
“You’ve got more votes coming,” she responded. “I’ll make sure of that.”
In Lee’s case, she admitted to agreeing to approve closing a small portion of Farish Street between two city parcels so the developers could build on top of it — a vote that was not then actually slated to come before the council. Lee also agreed to approve the actual development proposal, which would also have occurred several steps ahead in the process.
To ensnare the mayor, who does not vote on development projects, the agents exercised some creativity in establishing an official act. They asked Lumumba to close the deadline to respond to the city’s procurement two weeks earlier than planned under the guise that, prosecutors allege, it would exclude their competition — though two other firms managed to squeak through their proposals just in time, according to public records.
The indictment includes a photo from the yacht of the mayor, sitting next to Owens, talking on his phone to his city planning director.
The city never selected FST as the winning proposer and the council never took a vote on the project — not that it mattered for the purpose of charging the officials.
“It’s a broad statute … Under the conspiracy statute, (the crime is) doing an official act in exchange for some type of benefit, and it’s the contemplation of doing it in exchange for that benefit,” said attorney Aafram Sellers, who represented Lee through her guilty plea. “The fact that it wasn’t imminent that they were going to do it doesn’t matter.”
Weeks after the alleged bribes were delivered, the FBI raided Owens’ businesses and the district attorney’s office, where they found $20,000 in cash hidden in a lockbox disguised as a book titled, “The Constitution of The United States of America,” according to the indictment. They also seized phones from the mayor and the two city council members.
The investigation has been a slow burn in the months since, with the feds waiting until just after the presidential election to snag the big fish.
In cases where there’s evidence a public official has taken a direct personal benefit, such as cash or expensive gifts, in exchange for some official action, the government’s case for bribery is typically a slam dunk.
In Cincinnati, the federal government secured a conviction and two-year prison sentence for Cincinnati City Council member Jeff Pastor after he allegedly took $55,000 in bribes, much of it cash. Testimony in that case revealed that the agents also took Pastor to Miami and, like they did for Owens and Lumumba, treated him to expensive liquor, a yacht cruise and Tootsie’s Cabaret.
But when the only benefit to the official is a campaign contribution, a fine line exists between bribery and plain old politicking — especially in a political environment fueled by lax campaign finance requirements and a robust lobbying industry.
And in some cases resulting from these same FBI stings elsewhere, the criminality hasn’t been so clear.
Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, whom the undercover agents attempted to bribe with tickets to the broadway show Hamilton, was acquitted last year on one charge of lying to the FBI. A judge dismissed several other charges alleging he promised city contracts in exchange for donations during his 2018 run for the governor of Florida, according to POLITICO.
Cincinnati Councilman Alexander “PG” Sittenfeld, who was convicted last year of taking $20,000 in campaign contributions in exchange for his support of a development project in a nearly identical FBI sting, was released from prison early in May — a rare occurrence — after the court found his appeal raised a “close question” about his guilt.
Though agents recorded Sittenfeld saying questionable things like, “I can move more votes than any single other person,” he argued there was no evidence his future vote or lobbying effort was predicated on him receiving the donation. This exchange — what’s known as a “quid pro quo” — has to be explicit for a campaign donation to be considered a bribe. With his pro-development record, Sittenfeld argues he would have voted in favor of the developers regardless of the donation.
Dozens of high-profile legal scholars, including President Donald Trump’s attorney general and President Barack Obama’s White House counsel, signed a brief to the court that argued Sittenfeld’s conduct was not criminal.
The authors said that the councilman’s “statements of puffery” “typify the everyday discourse between politicians and their supporters.” Sittenfeld’s appeal is pending.
The prosecution of Owens, Lumumba and Banks is being handled by President Joe Biden appointee U.S. Attorney Todd Gee, a Vicksburg native who previously served as lead counsel for U.S. Congressman Bennie Thompson on the House Homeland Security Committee.
Thompson, the only Democrat in Mississippi’s delegation, recommended Gee for the position. Most recently, Gee was a deputy chief of the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice.
But the agents who conducted the sting came from out of state.
Sources close to the investigation said they believed two of the FBI agents posing as Nashville developers “Brian” and “Rob” were the same agents who went by “Brian” and “Rob” in similar investigations in Cincinnati and Columbus. The short, bald man playing the wealthy yacht-owning boss “Pauli” during Lumumba’s fundraiser, matches the description of the agent who went by “Vinny” in the Ohio cases.
Chris Lancaster, a realtor from outside of Nashville whose name was listed on the public development proposal in Jackson, shares a name with the businessman who worked undercover in a similar FBI sting in Tallahassee with an agent who also went by “Brian,” according to news reports. The logos used in those operations mirror the logo FST used.
These FBI agents’ assignments featured in criminal cases against at least the following public officials, according to news reports:
- Andrew “PG” Sittenfeld, Cincinnati City Council member
- Jeff Pastor, Cincinnati City Council member
- Larry Householder, Ohio Speaker of the House
- Andrew Gillum, Mayor of Tallahassee
- Scott Maddox, Tallahassee City Commissioner
- Paige Carter-Smith, executive director of the Tallahassee Downtown Improvement Authority
In Cincinnati and Columbus, the primary undercover agents went by aliases “Brian Bennett” and “Rob Miller.” Miller received a letter of censure from the FBI for his unprofessional conduct during the investigation. Like “Pauli” in the Jackson investigation, “Vinny” made a cameo appearance in the Cincinnati case, albeit a memorable one. At trial, Vinny described his persona as a “high-balling,” “wealthy investor boss,” the local TV station reported, who “liked to spend time on his yacht in Miami” and “was rich and rude.”
In Tallahassee, the newspaper characterized the agent known as “Brian Butler” as “bald-headed and stocky” and an agent known as “Mike Miller,” posing as an Atlanta-based developer, as “mysterious” and a “handsome bearded man” — descriptions matching the agents sources said dealt with the Jackson officials.
Lancaster, who had reportedly partnered with “Brian” in Tallahassee, appears to own a legitimate real estate firm in Hendersonville, Tennessee. The company boasts the down-to-earth sales style of Lancaster and his son: “muddy boots and dirty leather gloves in their pocket.”
Sources said two women, who they believe were also undercover agents, often accompanied the supposed developers. Those women joined Lee, the councilwoman, on her shopping spree at Maison Weiss women’s clothing store in Jackson’s Highland Village shopping center, sources said.
“Some of these four agents have checkered pasts and others have even engaged in misconduct in this particular investigation,” defense lawyers for Gillum, the former Tallahassee mayor, said in a court motion in his case, according to media reports. “Some have gotten plastered with alcohol during undercover meetings, some have actually offered and bought drugs, and some have even tried to ensnare their targets with women.”
The local FBI office did not respond to questions about these allegations.
By the time the out-of-state FBI agents came to Jackson, the city had been trying and failing to secure a developer to build a hotel complex on three empty blocks of Pascagoula Street for nearly two decades, especially since the $65 million convention center opened in 2009.
Under former Mayor Frank Melton in 2007, the city sold most of the land in question — a business deal that took years to unravel — to a Texas-based company pushing a proposal tied to a controversial developer previously charged and acquitted in a bribery scandal. Jackson Redevelopment Authority, which manages and oversees city property, eventually passed on that proposal in 2011.
At the end of former Mayor Harvey Johnson’s administration in 2013, he and then-Mayor-elect Chokwe Lumumba Sr. announced they’d reached a deal on a $60 million development in partnership with Hyatt Hotels. But it also fell through.
The next mayor, Tony Yarber, took at least $14,000 worth of campaign donations and other favors that prosecutors alleged Atlanta-based pastor and political consultant Mitzi Bickers gave him in an attempt to secure a piece of the convention center hotel project and a city wastewater contract in 2016. The FBI investigated this but eventually zeroed in on Bickers, who was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison for accepting $3 million in bribes to steer contracts in Atlanta when she served as the city’s director of human services.
In her 2022 trial, the prosecutor alleged Yarber received $80,000 worth of donations and gifts — described as bribes — from Bickers. Yarber testified to accepting a first class plane ticket, limousine rides and a private dance from a stripper during his trips to meet Bickers in Atlanta.
But Yarber also said he had no direct oversight of the awarding of Bickers’ contracts, which ultimately failed, and he was never charged. The $75 million hotel proposal Bickers helped put together, which Jackson Redevelopment Authority was still considering as the Bickers investigation became public, unsurprisingly died.
Asked about the current corruption probe in Jackson, Yarber said, “I’m just glad to be on the other side of the street watching this time.”
“But if there’s any difference, guess who didn’t get indicted?” Yarber told Mississippi Today Monday, denying that he ever testified to taking bribes from Bickers. “There was a lot of allegations. It was a lot of stuff, a lot of talk, a lot of writing. But yeah, no.”
Shortly after current Mayor Lumumba took office, the city spent at least a year developing a detailed downtown revitalization scope of work, which included a market analysis report, before issuing a Request for Proposals, or RFP, in 2019. An RFP is the document that spells out the city’s needs and officially solicits development proposals. Of the companies that responded to the bid, the city chose to interview one, but found their presentation insufficient and declined to pursue it, then-director of planning and development Mukesh Kumar told Mississippi Today.
The opportunity that those three empty blocks of Pascagoula street holds — or the missed opportunity it represents now — is bigger than downtown Jackson.
“Quality of life and being a revenue-generating economic driver for the city of Jackson is what that property has potential to be,” said Jhai Keeton, the current director planning and development. “It impacts everybody in central Mississippi. This is the heart of the state of Mississippi. Everybody says, ‘So goes Jackson, so goes the state.’ So goes that property.’”
The Tennessee realtor-turned-undercover-informant Lancaster and FBI agent Brian poked around Jackson for months before officially establishing FST in Miami in June of 2023.
The company was incorporated by a Jack Steele — which happens to be the pseudonym of an FBI informant who reportedly lived in Florida. It listed an operating address in Hendersonville, Tennessee, also where Lancaster’s company is located.
The next month in July, the city and Jackson Redevelopment Authority issued a new RFP for a convention center complex on the long-vacant downtown property.
Weeks later, while Lancaster was in town visiting a local lobbyist FST had hired, the informant asked where he could grab some cigars, and the lobbyist recommended the Downtown Cigar Company. The indictment said the informant had “a genuine interest in the products.”
The phony developer chummed it up at the lounge on Pearl Street — which the FBI would raid less than a year later — and shortly after met the owner, known to most as the county’s top prosecutor.
The indictment makes allusions, using Owens’ own quotes, to the DA running a larger money laundering operation out of the cigar bar: “I can do it in here. That’s why we have businesses. To clean the money. Right?” Owens said.
The indictment alleges Owens told the agents he was mixing the cash he received from them with “dope money and drug money and more than a million dollars” and storing it at the district attorney’s office. But the indictment does not include charges related to these comments.
Before Hinds County voters elected Owens as district attorney in 2019, the Terry native headed up the Mississippi office of the Southern Poverty Law Center, where he brought class action lawsuits on behalf of disenfranchised Mississippians and exposed unconstitutional child imprisonment. There, he was also accused of sexually harassing several women colleagues.
He opened Downtown Cigar Company in 2018. He also claims to be the co-founder and co-owner Magnolia 360 LLC, a real estate and property management firm run by the owner of a California-based tree service company.
In early 2020, State Auditor Shad White, who went to the same church as Owens while they both converted to Catholicism, brought the local DA the findings of an eight-month investigation that would rock the state for years to come. State welfare officials and a politically-connected nonprofit had been illegally funneling millions of federal assistance for the poor to their family, friends and professional athletes.
Owens swiftly indicted six individuals before the U.S. Attorney’s Office or FBI were even looped into the investigation — to the dismay of the federal government. Owens hasn’t charged any additional people in the case since.
Early on, the agents’ conversations about development in downtown Jackson were frenetic. Keeton, the city planning director, said they talked about “buying Farish Street.”
“They were saying all the fuzzy, feel good stuff,” Keeton said.
He said he got turned off after they invited him to a strip club and after they once asked to push a meeting later in the day because they were “still hungover from last night,” Keeton recalled.
In the fall of 2023, FST didn’t participate in the city’s then-open bid for downtown development proposals. By the deadline for submissions, the city had received none.
Regardless of the opportunity the agents would later pretend to pursue, they wanted Owens on their team. In November of 2023, Owens won reelection. The agents came to Jackson to celebrate with him, secretly recording him into the night.
“This is the part time job,” Owens said, describing his role as district attorney, “to get leverage for the full time job. This is the part time job to get the conversations and the access.”
All while the U.S. Attorney’s Office was operating a sting on Owens the businessman at night, during the day, it was coordinating with Owens the prosecutor on grand jury matters.
The day after the election, Owens and Smith negotiated payment of $100,000 each for their roles in consulting the developers, the indictment alleges. A third person, identified as a witness, negotiated payment of $50,000.
The next month, Owens sent the agents the city’s previous RFP and took the first of two trips to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, north of Miami, to meet with the men. During a meeting on their yacht, the agents handed the district attorney $125,000 in cash — the fees for Owens and his associates. Owens said that cash was “easier,” according to the indictment, “and that he had brought a bag on the trip specifically for that purpose.”
The District Attorney’s Office’s policies and procedures do not prohibit the prosecutor from having outside business interests. In his latest Statement of Economic Interest he’s required to file with the Mississippi Ethics Commission, Owens listed himself as a partner for Facility Solutions Team.
“If the money is for an innocent purpose on the face of it, they (the FBI) are basically financing the target to keep them involved and that shows a lack of judgment at least,” longtime San Francisco trial lawyer James Brosnahan told Mississippi Today.
Brosnahan, who has practiced for over six decades, including five years as a federal prosecutor, argued that’s what undercover agents did to his client, former school board member and political consultant Keith Jackson. Undercover FBI agents had hired Jackson and paid him “to do perfectly lawful things,” Brosnahan told reporters after Jackson pleaded guilty in 2014 to bribing former California state Sen. Leland Yee with campaign contributions.
“They also promised him great wealth. After they had done that, they began to embroil him in the matter that brings him to his plea,” Brosnahan said. “What authorized them to come into the Bay Area and do what they did? Is this government doing what we want them to do? My answer is no.”
An FBI agent in that case posing as a businessman from Atlanta, whose evidence was used to justify wiretapping the target, was shortly after removed from Keith Jackson’s case for financial misconduct, according to media reports.
Brosnahan also found that in the course of its Bay Area investigation, the FBI sent agents disguised as real estate investors to Joe Montana to lure him into the corruption sting. “It shows the deepest lack of judgment I can imagine,” Brosnahan said at the time. But the former 49ers quarterback didn’t bite, according to media reports.
In January, Owens began setting up meetings with each of the city council members so his new supposed business partners could gauge their interest in working with them.
“There was very little discussion of what they were offering,” council member Vernon Hartley said.
Hartley said the men wanted to pay for his salmon croquette at Walker’s Drive-In, but he insisted on paying his own bill. While some of the council found the phony developers unimpressive, Lee, and allegedly Banks, took the bait.
During their first meeting with Banks, one of the FBI agents asked what the council member would need to support the development moving forward.
“Fifty grand as soon as possible would help,” Banks said, according to the indictment.
The next night, Banks was pulled over for drinking and driving, but he wasn’t booked; the state trooper released him to Owens, WLBT reported. A judge would later require Banks to install a breathalyzer in his car’s ignition.
Banks wasn’t the only one dealing with personal issues. Lee, who was also charged with a DUI the previous year, was in thousands of dollars in debt from her 2020 election campaign. The sign printing shop she allegedly stiffed had sued her, and the court began garnishing her city council wages in 2023, WLBT reported.
The annual pay for Jackson City Council members, a part time job, is around just $25,000.
In the following weeks and months, agents spent thousands wining and dining the politicians at expensive restaurants around Jackson.
In the back room at the cigar lounge one night, Owens handed Banks an envelope containing $10,000, the indictment alleges, and asked the council man if he was comfortable taking cash because it was “not a check like we normally do.”
To make sure Banks was on board, prosecutors allege, FST also funded a paid internship position at the district attorney’s office for Banks’ family member and a driver service for Banks as he dealt with the aftermath of his DUI arrest — benefits totaling $6,300.
Two days later, Owens allegedly made the $10,000 payment towards Lee’s campaign debt in exchange for her future vote.
While this was going on, the city and Jackson Redevelopment Authority opened a new downtown project bid on Jan. 31. This time, the bid was a Request for Statements of Qualifications, which solicits information from prospective developers but does not require as many details about specific construction plans. The city said it was seeking a 335-room hotel, open entertainment space and parking garage.
By the end of February, the request was set to expire in two weeks and Keeton, the planning director, said the city hadn’t seen any nibbles — besides from FST. Keeton said he asked the mayor to extend the deadline to April 30 to give developers more time to respond.
“When it was extended, someone said to me that the (FST) developer was like, ‘Well, if it’s about money, we’ll wire $90 million tomorrow,’ and I said, ‘For what?’ That’s stupid,” Keeton said. “When you talk money around people that don’t have money, they get excited about it.”
FST pretended to partner with a Michigan-based construction and property management company called Contour Development to form the joint venture Jackson Development Group, according to the team’s 32-page statement dated March 10.
The document names Owens and his cousin Smith as the development group’s local partners. In describing Owens’ qualifications, it says his company Magnolia 360 manages more than 100 affordable homes and three apartment complexes in Jackson and that Owens has “spent the last decade recruiting business and developments in downtown Jackson.”
On the same day FST finalized the proposal, Owens wrote City Hall using his district attorney’s office email to confirm the investor group would be hosting a fundraiser for the mayor in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Owens indicated he was writing “Per Mayor Lumumba’s request.”
On March 19, Owens filed paperwork to incorporate FST in Mississippi, listing the cigar lounge as the address and his personal email as the contact, and he also opened a Mississippi bank account for the company.
Owens emailed Lumumba’s executive assistant Tiffany Murray an itinerary for the Florida trip, which included a “sunset cruise.” He attached an official letter, dated a month earlier on Feb. 10 and signed by Lancaster, inviting the mayor to the fundraiser to discuss their proposal for a state-of-the-art mixed-use development in downtown Jackson.
“We have a private charter that me and my detail will accompany the Mayor on,” Owens wrote.
Mississippi Today retrieved the emails through a public records request.
Days before the trip, prosecutors allege the agents met with Owens and Banks and told the officials they wanted the bid response deadline moved back and Banks responded, “If that’s an advantage for you guys, yes.”
At a mansion on a street lined with palm trees in Fort Lauderdale, sources said the mayor delivered impassioned remarks about Jackson’s challenges and its potential.
Lumumba, an attorney, first ran for mayor when he was just 30 years old in 2014 shortly after his father, former Mayor Chokwe Lumumba Sr., died eight months into office. After Lumumba’s loss in that election, he ran again in 2017 and earned a stunning 55% of the vote in a field of nine candidates in the Democratic primary. After his election, he promised to make Jackson “the most radical city on the planet.”
On the yacht with the FBI agents, Owens explained to Lumumba how he was dividing up the money — which the government alleged was meant to conceal the bribe. “We filtered it through several accounts in a way we comfortable doing,” Owens said, according to the indictment.
Owens assured Lumumba that the team was delivering $50,000 then, but that it planned to deliver more down the road, “to make sure there’s no worries about you financially in this thing cause you’re as big part of this thing as anybody,” according to the indictment.
The informant then asked Lumumba to move the Statement of Qualifications deadline, the indictment alleges. The mayor called Keeton, his planning director overseeing the bid process.
Keeton is described the phone call: “Phone rings. ‘What’s up boss man?’ ‘Aye man, let’s go ahead and move that date back.’ ‘Alright cool.’ ‘Alright goodbye.’ That was the conversation.”
The request didn’t come as a surprise, Keeton said, because the bid had already been open longer than planned and the mayor didn’t “want to lose anyone we’ve got hoping to get new people.”
The indictment alleges that Lumumba understood the campaign donation from the developers was in exchange for him directing his employee to change the deadline, but it does not include quotes from Lumumba about this.
Unlike Owens, the indictment does not heavily quote Lumumba. The mayor is quoted saying “yeah” three times and “okay” once in reference to the structure of the campaign contributions, but the indictment does not quote him in reference to the date change.
Later that night, the indictment alleges, the agents showered cash on Lumumba at the strip club.
While Lee and Banks allegedly took cash and other personal favors, the only bribe Lumumba has been charged with taking are the campaign contributions. Lumumba declined to provide Mississippi Today a record of his most recent campaign contributions, which he is not required to report until January.
Mississippi campaign finance law is notoriously loose, and there are almost never consequences for non-reporting. The state has no limit on the dollar amount an individual, LLC or PAC can donate to candidates, and there is no prohibition on donations from those doing business with the government or “gift law” curbing lavishment from lobbyists.
In theory, laws requiring candidates to disclose their campaign contributors should provide the transparency needed to examine whether wealthy contractors are buying politicians. But the statutes are confusing, and where the law is clear, there is little enforcement, especially on the municipal level.
Though Lumumba is statutorily required to file campaign finance reports with the city clerk annually in non-election years, Lumumba has not filed a report since his 2021 reelection.
“Unfortunately, that is not uncustomary for my campaign,” he said at a press conference in October, the Clarion Ledger reported.
Municipal Clerk Angela Harris would not answer questions about her office’s handling of nonfilers. The Secretary of State, which receives reports from state candidates, is required to turn over possible reporting violations to the Mississippi Ethics Commission. But the ethics commission director Tom Hood said to his recollection, his office had never received notice of a possible violation from a city clerk, and there’s no mention of city candidates in the law that authorizes the commission to assess fines.
Meanwhile, pay-to-play in state government is so common, State Auditor White casually described the occurrence in a Facebook post advertising a recent study his office commissioned: “A lot of waste … works like this: a lobbyist walks in the door and convinces an agency head they need to buy a new thing. The lobbyist and the agency head go to a lawmaker and ask them to appropriate some money for the new thing (and the lobbyist gives the lawmaker a campaign donation, just for good measure). The money gets appropriated, the agency head buys the thing, and everyone is happy – except the taxpayer, who had no idea this was happening.”
According to a 2023 Mississippi Today investigation, Gov. Tate Reeves has received $1.6 million in campaign donations from companies that have received more than $1.4 billion in state contracts or grants since 2003.
Sittenfeld’s lawyer stressed to jurors that the councilman had taken 1,800 donations during his campaign, but the only ones causing him trouble were those from the FBI agents. “If any of the other donations were illegal, you would have heard of them,” the lawyer said in closing arguments, according to news reports.
Both Lumumba and Owens made no indication of plans to step down from office. The trial likely won’t occur for months or longer. Each of them strongly defended themselves against the charges.
During one of the meetings with the agents, in which Owens described how he “want(ed) the paper trail to look” for the campaign contributions, the state’s most populous county’s top prosecutor made his goal known: “At the end of the fucking day, my most important job is to keep everybody out of jail or prison because I’m not fucking going.”
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FBI informant says he gave Hinds County sheriff candidate $9,500 in exchange for favors
Tonarri Moore, who was recruited by the FBI to work as an informant and collect evidence against Marshand Crisler, testified for over an hour Thursday about offering the former interim Hinds County sheriff $9,500 in bribes between September and November 2021, during Crisler’s sheriff campaign.
Moore began cooperating with the federal government following a September 2021 Drug Enforcement Agency raid on his home. Moore testified that nobody asked him about targeting Crisler and he told an agent he was not bribing him. Then he was asked whether Crisler would accept a bribe.
“Let’s see,” Moore said about working with the FBI to see what Crisler would offer in exchange for money.
The government argues Crisler made promises to tell Moore about any criminal investigations involving him, to move a member of his family to a safer place in the county jail, to give Moore a job with the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department and to allow him to possess a firearm despite a felony conviction.
The jury heard recordings of meetings where those alleged promises were made, and Moore was asked to recall them.
Crisler has pleaded not guilty to a bribery charge and a charge for giving ammunition to Moore, who is unable to possess it as a convicted felon under federal law.
On Thursday, Moore was brought to court from the Madison County jail in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs. He is being held on a state charge of conspiracy to commit murder relating to the May death of a Jackson man. The recordings were made before Moore was detained.
In previous court records Moore was referred to as “Confidential Human Source 1.” The government revealed his identity Wednesday during the first day of trial.
During cross examination, Crisler’s attorney, John Colette, asked Moore about his previous convictions, how he began to cooperate with the FBI and a plea deal he entered into with the U.S. Attorney’s Office this year in exchange for his testimony.
Late Thursday morning, without the jury present, Colette was allowed to cross-examine Moore about his previous convictions and how he began to cooperate with the FBI to investigate his client.
Colette asked Moore about other bribes he’s allegedly made to Jackson and Hinds County officials. He admitted a $100,000 bribe to someone in the district attorney’s office. But he invoked his Fifth Amendment right or said he did not recall when asked about bribes to people in city government and Jackson police officers.
Moore confirmed during questioning by Colette that he is expected to testify against Torrence Mayfield, a former Jackson police officer and 2021 sheriff’s candidate, as part of his plea deal with the federal government. Mayfield faces federal charges for trying to sell a firearm to Moore, despite his felony conviction.
Earlier in the day, the government finished questioning Daniel Ratliff, a former FBI task force officer involved with the Crisler investigation who recruited Moore as an informant.
The jury also heard briefly from other witnesses.
FBI supervisory special agent Jamaal King testified about working with a unit whose work includes interception of phone calls. Hinds County Undersheriff Jarrat Taylor testified about the office’s hiring practices and the ability to move people at the jail. Kyle Kirkpatrick, of the Secretary of State’s Office, testified about campaign finance and reporting amounts, such as the $9,500.
Trial is expected to last one more day with closing arguments before the case is handed over to the jury for deliberation.
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Hinds DA Jody Owens, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, councilman Aaron Banks indicted in federal corruption probe
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The mayor of Mississippi’s capital city, the top prosecutor in the state’s largest county and a Jackson city council member have been indicted on conspiracy and bribery charges in a case that has already forced the resignation of another city council member, according to federal court records unsealed Thursday.
The charges against Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens and Jackson City Council member Aaron B. Banks were brought after two people working for the FBI posed as real estate developers who wanted to build a hotel near the convention center in downtown Jackson and provided payments to officials, including $50,000 for the mayor’s reelection campaign, according to court documents.
READ MORE: The full indictment against Owens, Lumumba, and Banks
Lumumba, Jody Owens and Banks were scheduled to make initial appearances Thursday before a magistrate judge.
Lumumba released a video statement Wednesday saying he had been indicted and calling it a “political prosecution” to hurt his 2025 campaign for reelection.
“My legal team has informed me that federal prosecutors have, in fact, indicted me on bribery and related charges,” said Lumumba, who is an attorney. “To be clear, I have never accepted a bribe of any type. As mayor, I have always acted in the best interests of the city of Jackson.”
The Associated Press left a phone message Thursday for Owens’ attorney, Thomas Gerry Bufkin. Federal court documents did not immediately list an attorney for Banks.
Lumumba and Banks were elected in mid-2017. Owens was elected in 2019 and took office in 2020. All three are Democrats.
Jackson City Council member Angelique Lee, a Democrat, first elected in 2020, resigned in August and pleaded guilty to federal bribery charges as the result of the same FBI investigation. Her sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 13.
In May, FBI agents raided Owens’ office and a cigar bar he owns in downtown Jackson. Among the items found in the district attorney’s office was a lockbox made to look like a book labeled as the U.S. Constitution, containing about $20,000 in cash, with about $9,900 showing serial numbers confirming it was paid by the purported developers to Owens, according to the newly unsealed indictment.
Owens boasted to the purported developers about having influence over Jackson officials and “facilitated over $80,000 in bribe payments” to Lumumba, Banks and Lee in exchange for their agreement to to ensure approval of the multimillion-dollar downtown development, according to the indictment. The document also says Owens “solicited and accepted at least $115,000 in cash and promises of future financial benefits” from the purported developers to use his relationships with Lumumba, Banks and Lee and act as an intermediary for the payments to them.
Lumumba directed a city employee to move a deadline to favor the purported developers’ project, and Banks and Lee agreed to vote in favor of it, according to the indictments unsealed Thursday.
Sherik Marve Smith — who is an insurance broker and a relative of Owens, according to court documents — waived indictment and pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge in the case Oct. 17. He agreed to forfeit $20,000, and his sentencing is set for Feb. 19.
Smith conspired to give cash payments and campaign contributions to two Jackson elected officials, and the money came from the purported developers who were working for the FBI, according to court documents.
Owens, Lumumba, Smith and the purported developers traveled in April on a private jet paid by the FBI to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, according to the newly unsealed indictment. During a meeting on a yacht that was recorded on audio and video, Lumumba received five campaign checks for $10,000 each, and he called a Jackson city employee and instructed that person to move a deadline for submission of proposals to develop the property near the convention center, the indictment says. The deadline was moved in a way to benefit the purported developers who were working for the FBI by likely eliminating any of their competition, the indictment says.
The mayor said his legal team will “vigorously defend me against these charges.”
“We believe this to be a political prosecution against me, designed to destroy my credibility and reputation within the community,” Lumumba said.
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On this day in 1837
Nov. 7, 1837
Abolitionist, clergyman and editor Elijah P. Lovejoy was assassinated by a pro-slavery mob. He is considered the first martyr for freedom of the press in America.
After denouncing the lynching and burning of a Black man in St. Louis, a mob tore down his office and destroyed his printing press for the third time, he decided to move to Alton, Illinois, which was a free state.
He continued to champion the end of lynchings of Black Americans and the abolition of slavery, saying, “As long as I am an American citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write and to publisher whatever I please, being amenable to the laws of my country for the same.”
After mobs tossed another printing press in the river, donations came in from across the nation to buy him another one. When local leaders passed resolutions calling for Lovejoy to leave town, he rose to defend his rights. Yes, he had been threatened with being tarred and feathered and even assassinated, he said, with his wife driven from her sick bed to “save her life from the brickbats and violence of the mobs.”
Despite these threats, he stood firm, and when his fifth press arrived, he hid it in a nearby warehouse along with abolitionist materials. While he and others stood guard, a mob shot him dead.
John Quincy Adams called the news of the killing a “shock as of an earthquake through the country.” And when abolitionist John Brown learned of the killing, he swore, “Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery.”
No one was ever convicted of his murder. At the time, Lovejoy had to be buried in an unmarked grave, but in 1897, a 110-foot tall monument was built to honor him.
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Optum audit shows possible law violation, lower payments to independent pharmacies
The findings of a recent audit of a major company that manages prescription benefits revealed it may have violated Mississippi law.
The review of Minnesota-based Optum’s business practices by the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy indicated that the company paid independent pharmacies in Mississippi rates lower than chains and Optum-affiliated pharmacies for the same prescription drugs.
The audit uncovered over 75,000 instances in which Optum-affiliated pharmacies’ lowest payments for a prescription drug were higher than at unaffiliated pharmacies in one year, including chain and independent drug stores.
Mississippi state law prohibits pharmacy benefit managers from reimbursing their affiliate pharmacies, or ones they own, at higher rates than non-affiliate pharmacies for the same services.
In some cases, patients footed the bill: consumers were almost twice as likely to pay the full cost of a prescription drug claim without contributions from their insurance plan at independent pharmacies than at affiliated pharmacies.
The Board of Pharmacy will hold an administrative hearing based on the alleged violations of Mississippi law on Dec. 19. Board staff declined to answer questions about the audit or its findings.
“I think this proves that we need to have more transparency, we need to have more PBM reform in Mississippi and across the country and even on a federal level,” said Robert Dozier, the executive director of the Mississippi Independent Pharmacy Association, an organization that advocates for 180 pharmacy members.
Optum declined to answer specific questions about the audit. The company has identified errors in the audit’s findings and methodology and submitted them to the Board of Pharmacy, said Isaac Sorenson, a spokesperson for Optum.
“The pharmacy – and local pharmacists – play a vital role in supporting people’s health and we are committed to paying them fairly,” he said. “…For pharmacies in rural and underserved communities, Optum Rx is deepening its commitment to support their role by launching new programs, expanding existing initiatives and launching a new pharmacy network option for customers.”
He said the new pharmacy network option will provide pharmacies with increased reimbursements. Generic drugs will be reimbursed at 5% higher rates and brand name drugs at .2% higher rates.
Optum is owned by health care behemoth UnitedHealth Group Inc., the U.S.’ most profitable health care company and the owner of the nation’s largest health insurance company, UnitedHealthcare. In 2023, the company reaped $32.4 billion in earnings.
Pharmacy benefit managers are private companies that act as middlemen between pharmacies, drug manufacturers and insurers. They process prescription drug claims, negotiate pricing and conditions for access to drugs and manage retail pharmacy networks.
Optum is one of the largest three pharmacy benefit managers in the U.S., which together account for 79% of prescription drug claims nationwide.
The results of the audit echoed some of the conclusions of a Federal Trade Commission report published in July: large pharmacy benefit managers pay their own, affiliated pharmacies significantly more than other pharmacies and set reimbursement rates at untenably low levels for independent drug stores, or retail pharmacies not owned by a publicly traded company or owned by a large chain, said the report.
Mississippi Today reported last month that many Mississippi independent pharmacists fear they may be forced to close their businesses due to low reimbursement rates from pharmacy benefit managers.
Pharmacy benefit managers have an incentive to steer customers towards their affiliate pharmacies and compensate them at higher rates, which can disadvantage unaffiliated pharmacies and lead to higher drug costs, said the Federal Trade Commission.
Optum’s affiliate pharmacies include Optum Home Delivery Pharmacy and Optum Specialty Pharmacy.
The audit revealed that Optum uses 49 different maximum cost lists, or schedules created by pharmacy benefit managers that determine the highest price they will pay pharmacies for generic drugs. Maximum cost lists are proprietary and confidential, even to the pharmacies that are reimbursed based on the lists, and change continuously.
“I think that’s 48 too many,” said Dozier. “There should only be one MAC list.”
Fifteen are used exclusively at independent pharmacies and 22 are used solely at chain pharmacies.
An analysis of the maximum allowable cost lists showed that independent pharmacies were reimbursed at rates 74% lower than chain pharmacies on average.
An analysis of a generic drug used to treat bacterial infections yielded a payment to an Optum-affiliated pharmacy that was eight times higher than the lowest-paid independent pharmacy on the same day. Chain and affiliate pharmacies were paid over 20 times as much as independent pharmacies for a generic drug used to treat stomach and esophagus problems.
Pharmacies’ attempts to contest low reimbursement rates were often unsuccessful, showed the audit.
Ninety-eight percent of pharmacy appeals were denied, most commonly because they did not include information about how much the pharmacy paid to acquire the medication from a wholesaler.
Mississippi law prohibits pharmacy benefit managers from reimbursing pharmacies at rates below their cost to acquire the drug, even when using a maximum allowable cost list. But the audit revealed over 400 times that Optum denied pharmacies’ appeals on those grounds, saying that the maximum cost list was accurate.
The audit, which studied Optum in 2022, was the first commissioned by the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy after revisions to state law in 2020 gave it more regulatory authority over pharmacy benefit managers.
It took the board several years to hire staff to enact the law and receive approval to increase its budget due to the high costs of audits, the board’s executive director Susan McCoy told lawmakers at the House Select Committee on Prescription Drugs Aug. 21 at the Capitol.
The board also has pending administrative proceedings with the other largest pharmacy benefit managers in the country, Express Scripts and CVS Caremark. Neither is the result of an audit. Both hearings are scheduled for Nov. 21.
Optum has already faced scrutiny for its business practices in Mississippi. In August, Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed a lawsuit alleging that Optum and several other pharmacy benefit managers stoked the opioid epidemic by plotting with manufacturers to increase sales of the addictive drugs and boost their profits. The suit also named Evernorth Health and Express Scripts, along with the companies’ subsidiaries.
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Bribery trial begins for former Hinds County interim sheriff
The federal trial of former Hinds County interim sheriff and candidate Marshand Crisler began Wednesday with attorneys offering differing interpretations of whether evidence will show he sought and accepted bribes and gave ammunition to a convicted felon.
Crisler, 54, has pleaded not guilty to two charges stemming from actions that happened between September and November 2021 when he ran for a full term as sheriff.
“The defendant used his badge as a bargaining chip,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Kirkham said in his opening statement.
He argued that in exchange for $9,500, Crisler made promises to a man named Tonarri Moore, who Kirkham identified as the government’s informant.
Crisler allegedly made promises to inform Moore of any criminal investigations about him, to move a member of his family to a better place in the county jail, to give Moore a job with the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department and to give him the ability to possess a firearm despite a felony conviction.
Evidence from the FBI’s investigation are recorded phone conversations and in-person meetings between Crisler and Moore. Prior to trial, the recordings and transcripts were restricted from public access and the indictment and other court filings referred to a “Confidential Human Source 1.”
The government intends to call Moore as a witness. He is currently being held at the Madison County jail on a pending manslaughter charge. The recordings were made before Moore was detained.
Crisler’s defense attorney, John Colette, said his client did not do any of the things asked of him in exchange for money.
He asked the jury to consider timing and how the government is “cherry picking and not telling the whole story.”
That timing includes the indictment, which came months before the 2023 Democratic primary when Crisler ran again for sheriff. He remained in the race and lost to incumbent Tyree Jones, who he previously faced in 2021.
In court, Colette also raised questions about Moore’s credibility, saying he started cooperating with the FBI after a search of his home by the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Colette told the jury how Moore and Crisler knew each other: Moore worked on Crisler’s 2019 campaign, and Moore has given donations to other political candidates.
While Crisler may have considered the money exchanged to be campaign donations, he didn’t report them as such, the government argued.
“Even if he did use that campaign money, it’s still a bribe because the defendant accepted that money as a quid pro quo in exchange for official acts,” Kirkham said.
Crisler is also charged with giving 14 9mm bullets to Moore., Prosecutors say who Crisler knew Moore was previously convicted and not allowed to possess ammunition or weapons because of his felony conviction.
But Colette said his client didn’t know until later that Moore hadwas a felony convictionconvicionted felon. Additionally, he said it is not against the law in Mississippi for a formerly convicted person to possess ammunition.
Each charge has a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
The first witness called was Daniel Ratliff, a Mississippi Gaming Commission investigator who was part of the investigation of Crisler when he was a member of an FBI task force. His role was to recruit Moore as an informant and oversee meetings between Crisler and Moore, and recordings of those meetings.
During Ratliff’s testimony, the jury heard over a dozen recordings that are portions of recordings of the meetings between Crisler and Moore.
“The reason is I’m the sheriff,” Crisler said in one of the recordings played during the government’s opening statement and during Ratliff’s testimony.
“They’re going to let me do things they don’t let anybody else do,” he said.
During cross examination, Colette asked a range of questions, including how reliable the recordings are and whether the FBI knew about Moore’s prior convictions before trying to recruit him.
“You wanted to get him to come snitch for you … you didn’t want him to be an agent,” Colette said to Ratliff.
Trial is expected to last three days and is before Senior U.S. District Court Judge Tom Lee.
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Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba indicted in federal corruption probe
Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, who leads Mississippi’s largest and capital city, confirmed Wednesday he has been indicted by a federal grand jury in a sweeping corruption probe.
The charges come after undercover FBI agents posing as real estate investors invited the mayor to a fundraiser in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, on April 3, according to public records. They said they wanted to develop property in downtown Jackson and help fund the mayor’s 2025 reelection campaign.
“My legal team has informed me that federal prosecutors have, in fact, indicted me on bribery and related charges,” Lumumba said in a video statement shared with reporters on Tuesday. “To be clear, I have never accepted a bribe of any type. As mayor, I have always acted in the best interests of the citizens of Jackson.”
The feds had enlisted the help of an unsuspecting Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, who dabbles in real estate and business consulting. The agents created a company called Facility Solutions Team and got Owens to deliver campaign contributions to the mayor on their behalf, according to federal charges recently filed against Owens’ cousin and associate.
The FBI sting involved a proposed hotel development project in downtown Jackson across from the convention center — a vacant property that has produced a nearly 20-year saga of failed bids and political consternation. In partnership with Owens, the undercover FBI agents created a proposal earlier this year to submit in response to the city’s Statement of Qualifications (SOQ), a document that spells out a city’s needs and solicits interested developers but does not guarantee a contract with the city.
For the government to establish a bribe — known as a “quid pro quo” — a public official must agree to take an official act in exchange for the benefit. Lumumba’s official act, according to federal court documents, was directing a city employee to move up a deadline on the SOQ to an earlier date.
Lumumba had already been in conversation with the city’s Planning and Development Director Jhai Keeton about when to end the bid because they originally chose to extend it by about a month and a half in late February, Keeton said. Originally, FST was the only developer to express interest in the project, Keeton said, and he had wanted to give developers more time to respond.
While Lumumba was in South Florida meeting with the undercover agents, he called Keeton and told him to move the deadline back two weeks to April 16. Keeton didn’t think too much of it, he said, because the mayor had already expressed that “we don’t want to lose anyone we’ve got hoping to get new people.”
“There were still two weeks available to create more competition.” Keeton said.
Two other companies handed in their responses on the day of the deadline. The planning department did not select a winner.
The undercover sting operation has already yielded federal charges against another local elected official. Former Jackson City Councilwoman Angelique Lee pleaded guilty to bribery charges related to the sting in August and promptly resigned from the council.
The feds also raided the businesses of Owens in May. Owens’ cousin Sherik “Marve” Smith pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in October, admitting that he acted as the middleman between an unindicted co-conspirator and two public officials — also unindicted co-conspirators.
Lumumba, who has for years shrugged off public accusations of corruption and has already announced his 2025 reelection bid, preempted official announcement of the federal indictment with his own statement issued to reporters on Tuesday afternoon.
“We believe this to be a political prosecution against me, primarily designed to destroy my credibility and reputation within the community,” Lumumba said in the video statement on Tuesday. “There is no coincidence in its timing being just before the upcoming mayoral race. My legal team will vigorously defend me against these charges. While I am disappointed, I am not deterred, so I ask for your patience and your prayers during this process.”
Lumumba is expected to be arraigned in federal court on Thursday. A spokesperson for the mayor said he has no plans to resign. The U.S. attorney’s office for the southern district of Mississippi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The FBI has been poking around Jackson City Hall for years.
Former council member D’Keither Stamps said federal agents interviewed him in 2014, not long after he took office, seeking information about a 2012 water billing and meter installation contract city entered with Germany-based engineering firm Siemens. The bungled contract contributed to the city losing millions in water revenue. In 2021 and 2022, infrastructure failures left residents without water for days and weeks.
A former city employee said the FBI interviewed her in 2015 about alleged bid-steering in the public works department under the city’s former administration.
Sources close to a federal investigation say the FBI has been examining a long-running dispute between the mayor and council over the city’s selection of a garbage collection vendor, which resulted in a 17-day trash pile up in the spring of 2023.
In December 2023, a former Lumumba administration appointee Keyshia Sanders was sentenced after pleading guilty to federal wire fraud charges related to her work as the city of Jackson’s constituent service manager.
‘The city is built for corruption. The system is built to be manipulated,” said Stamps, who left city council in 2021 and now serves as public service commissioner for Mississippi’s central district.
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Ole Miss, State post record enrollments as more students pursue college in Mississippi
The University of Mississippi posted its second consecutive record-breaking enrollment this fall, according to figures released Monday by the governing board of the state’s eight public universities.
The state’s flagship university in Oxford now enrolls more than 27,000 students, an 11% increase over last year’s headcount. This propulsive growth is fueled by the largest-ever freshmen class in state history, high retention rates, and an increasing number of out-of-state students.
“Our growth reflects the University of Mississippi’s position as a thriving destination of choice for higher education,” Chancellor Glenn Boyce said in a press release.
Through a spokesperson, the university declined to answer questions about the more than 2,400 new students, including how many are first-time freshmen, transfer students, or from out of state.
“While overall enrollment has been announced, demographic-level data is still being reviewed by the IHL with final approval expected next month,” Jacob Batte, the director of news and media relations, wrote in an email.
Not to be outdone, Mississippi State University also celebrated an all-time-high in enrollment of more than 23,000 students. The land-grant university enrolled more minority, international and veteran students this year than last, according to a press release that also noted it is the state’s only institution of higher learning to experience enrollment growth for nine of the last 10 years.
“We’re focused on higher education at MSU being unequivocally accessible and are dedicated to ensuring every Bulldog student is on their path to a degree, including those who start at a community college or who have been out of college for a while,” President Mark Keenum said in the release.
Rounding out the state’s three largest universities, the University of Southern Mississippi’s enrollment held just about steady at 13,170 students, gaining half a percentage point over the previous school year.
As higher education officials wait for the enrollment cliff, Mississippi’s three top-tier research universities are scooping up an increasing share of students who pursue higher education in the state. This means the five other, less-resourced universities are competing for a declining pool of students and tuition dollars.
Earlier this year, lawmakers asked the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees about recommendations and strategies to help the state’s eight public universities weather the anticipated drop in enrollment. In the Southern U.S., Mississippi is expected to see the second-worse decline in high school graduates by 2027 after Virginia.
Following the hearing, one lawmaker introduced a bill to close three universities that ultimately died in the Senate Colleges and Universities Committee.
Overall, nearly 80,000 students are attending public universities in Mississippi, according to IHL’s figures.
“Our universities offer a strong foundation for students from across the state and beyond, and these numbers reinforce the confidence of students and parents alike in the quality education available throughout our system,” Al Rankins, the IHL commissioner, said in a press release. “We are grateful to the Mississippi Legislature and Governor Reeves for partnering with us in keeping our universities affordable for Mississippi families.”
Most universities in the state gained enrollment. Mississippi Valley State University and Alcorn State University saw growth this semester.
But Mississippi University for Women, Jackson State University and Delta State University’s enrollment dropped.
Despite a 1.5% decline to 2,193 students this semester, the W welcomed its largest freshman class in four years, which the president credited to recent efforts to grow the enrollment, including increased advertising and marketing aimed at a larger pool of prospective students, more academic scholarships paired with an affordable tuition rate, and attendance at national college fairs.
This semester, the W had 174 new freshmen, up 15 students from last year.
“The growth in new freshmen is a testament to recent changes we have made in the recruitment process,” Nora Miller said in a press release. “We look forward to continuing that growth, while forging more pathways for community college transfer students to complete their baccalaureate degrees at The W.”
Still, the enrollment cliff means it’s unclear the growth in the freshmen class will translate to more overall students in the coming years. A university spokesperson noted the drop in the number of college-going high school graduates will be challenging for the W.
“The coming change in the high school graduate population/demographics will be a challenge for every higher education institution in Mississippi, but especially for regional universities like The W,” Tyler Wheat wrote in an email.
Wheat added the university is looking to connect with students, especially those who might transfer from a community college.
“Our goal is an enrollment that is healthy and sustainable for our institution,” he wrote.
At Delta State, where enrollment woes recently led to major budget cuts, the president, Daniel Ennis, anticipated a drop in the number of students after 21 programs were cut.
IHL’s numbers show that Delta State lost 62 students for a total of 2,654 students this semester, but the university says that is mostly not related to the program cuts.
“Based on our preliminary numbers, the majority of the fall 2024 headcount reduction is related to non-degree-seeking part-time students, such as dual-enrollment high school students, post-baccalaureate students, and other non-degree-seeking students who occasionally take a course,” Christy Riddle, a spokesperson, wrote in an email.
The university’s first-time freshmen class increased to 210 students this semester, which is three more than last year. Excluding dual credit students, the number of students enrolled full-time at Delta State rose by nearly 5% this year, Riddle added.
Jackson State lost 238 students, putting its fall enrollment at 6,326.
The university did not respond to questions about what caused the decline and if it has a plan to increase enrollment.
“We’re working on an enrollment release that we intend to share with the public,” Rachel James-Terry, the director of public relations, wrote in an email.
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