considered among a handful of front-runners<\/a> in the race to replace outgoing U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, has said he\u2019s committed to continuing his campaign for the 3rd Congressional District seat, despite losing money that he is unlikely to see returned before the May 19 primary.<\/p>\nIn January, before allegations of the missing money became public, Rabb was already significantly trailing the financial front-runner in the race. Records show he had about $100,000 in his campaign account at the start of the year, while state Sen. Sharif Street reported having more than five times that amount.<\/p>\n
Rabb\u2019s campaign declined to say how much money was taken, citing the ongoing law enforcement investigation.<\/p>\n
Abe White, Rabb\u2019s spokesperson, said in a statement that the campaign identified the unauthorized withdrawals after finding errors in its most recent campaign finance filing, which encompasses fundraising and spending activity from October to December.<\/p>\n
He said the campaign had protocols in place to reconcile accounts and \u201cimmediately took action\u201d after coming across the suspicious activity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe campaign\u2019s former treasurer manipulated every campaign safeguard in place,\u201d White said. \u201cIt\u2019s what these people do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davis, Brown\u2019s attorney, said his client intends to pay back the funds he alleges were stolen by the employee.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s just going to take responsibility,\u201d he said, \u201cand try to remedy the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Very few people working on political campaigns have access to the bank accounts powering their efforts. The accounts see thousands \u2014 and sometimes millions \u2014 of dollars flowing in and out in a relatively short period of time.<\/p>\n
That means candidates put significant trust in their treasurers, who are official designees responsible for ensuring campaigns comply with finance laws.<\/p>\n
Matthew Haverstick, a managing partner with Kleinbard LLC, a Philadelphia-based law firm that often works with political campaigns and causes, said it\u2019s essential that campaigns thoroughly vet campaign treasurers and compliance consultants.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is why you work hard at the front end of this stuff in campaigns,\u201d Haverstick, who is not working for any candidate in the race, said of Rabb\u2019s situation. \u201cWhen you\u2019re deep into a campaign and a problem like this blows up, it has the potential to end the campaign. So the right time to spend a little more money and try a little harder is before you hire somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rabb, a five-term Pennsylvania state representative, entrusted his account to Brown shortly after launching his run for Congress in July. Rabb hadn\u2019t worked with Brown before, and records show no other campaign in Pennsylvania has paid her or her firm for work.<\/p>\n
The three other candidates who have so far raised the most money in the 3rd Congressional District race have treasurers based in Philadelphia. But it\u2019s not unheard of for candidates to use consultants and staff from out of state, especially when they\u2019re seeking federal office.<\/p>\n
White, Rabb\u2019s spokesperson, said Brown \u201ccame highly recommended\u201d and \u201cthere was no reason for concern\u201d when she was hired.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, other Democrats who hired Brown said they similarly saw no warning signs until it was too late.<\/p>\n
In January, the chairperson of a PAC backing St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch said she\u2019d reported Brown to law enforcement for misspending $207,000.<\/p>\n
Brown had worked with the group, called The Pelican PAC, for about a year. Campaign finance records show that last fall, several transactions were made to transfer money from the PAC account into O\u2019Reilly Business LLC, a separate entity that Brown controls.<\/p>\n
Davis said Brown\u2019s employee also had access to that LLC, and said it was the employee who moved the money.<\/p>\n
Adrienne Bogen, who heads The Pelican PAC, said Brown was removed as the PAC\u2019s treasurer in January.<\/p>\n
She was hired following \u201cstandard onboarding practices,\u201d Bogen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing was identified that raised concerns,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
In reality, Brown had been under indictment on 10 criminal charges in Alameda County, California, where she worked as a finance manager for Oakland-based consultancy BMWL & Partners. She was charged under the name \u201cYolanda Cheers.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2019, prosecutors in court documents accused Brown \u2014 referring to her as \u201cCheers\u201d \u2014 of routing money belonging to a nonprofit client of the consultancy to herself and then, years after being fired, taking out unauthorized loans in BMWL\u2019s name. She faced charges of aggravated white-collar crime, grand theft by embezzlement, forgery and identity theft, and could have faced years in prison.<\/p>\n
The same year she was indicted in California, Brown faced legal trouble elsewhere. Authorities in Washington, D.C., accused her of fraud, allegations that came to light after she filed for bankruptcy in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
Brown had previously worked as a grants manager for the local government in D.C. and owed the city $52,700 while filing for bankruptcy, the D.C. attorney general wrote in court papers. Authorities alleged that in 2014 and 2015, Brown asked two city contractors to hire her fianc\u00e9, and she billed them for work that he supposedly completed \u2014 even though he was on an active duty military assignment at the time.<\/p>\n
The Minnesota bankruptcy case moved forward. Much of Brown\u2019s debt was erased, but not the money that she owed in Washington.<\/p>\n
On the other side of the country, the criminal case in California languished for nearly five years.<\/p>\n
In February 2024, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced that her office had reached a plea deal<\/a>. Brown pleaded no contest to one count of grand theft by embezzlement and was required to pay $330,000 in restitution. She served no jail time.<\/p>\nDavis cast the no-contest plea as Brown\u2019s attempt to put the charges behind her \u2014 not as an admission of guilt.<\/p>\n
\u201cCourt could be kind of dragging on people,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very big burden.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the campaign allegations against Brown in St. Petersburg and Philadelphia trickled out this year, others who have worked with her said they reported activity they think is suspicious to law enforcement.<\/p>\n
Jamie Jodoin, a Florida-based political and financial consultant, said she worked on a PAC last year that hired Brown as its treasurer. She said Brown wired $25,000 out of the PAC\u2019s bank account and later closed the account without notifying the candidate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have no idea where that went,\u201d Jodoin said.<\/p>\n
Political campaigns, which are small and short-lived entities, often don\u2019t carry insurance against internal theft. But they do usually have review processes.<\/p>\n
The Federal Election Commission recommends candidates put in place internal controls such as risk assessment and monitoring in order to prevent the misappropriation of funds. The guidance says that bank statements should be reviewed by someone who isn\u2019t also writing the checks.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsent some basic checks and balances,\u201d the commission says in its recommendations, \u201csome people will inevitably give in to temptation.\u201d<\/p>\n
White said the Rabb campaign had safeguards in place. But he added that, after the unauthorized withdrawals were identified, the campaign newly established \u201cairtight financial protocols\u201d such as \u201cstrengthening oversight and internal controls.\u201d<\/p>\n
The campaign recently named a new treasurer and hired a new compliance firm.<\/p>\n
Bogen, of Welch\u2019s PAC in St. Petersburg, said Brown\u2019s access to internal systems and bank accounts was \u201cimmediately revoked\u201d once it was discovered that she had made suspicious transactions.<\/p>\n
Brown, Bogen said, \u201chas not been heard from since.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a92026 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2014 Philadelphia congressional candidate Chris Rabb is one of many people who say Yolanda Brown owes him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[84872,84870,84871,84869,14250,10392,55035,202,204,203,199,201,200,3525],"class_list":["post-179450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-bank-accounts","tag-campaign-donations","tag-campaign-treasurer","tag-chris-rabb","tag-philadelphia","tag-political-campaigns","tag-political-consultant","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-yolanda-brown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}