Nine People Charged with Bribing Homeless on Skid Row with Cash, Cigarettes in Voter Fraud Scheme

Nine People Charged with Bribing Homeless on Skid Row with Cash, Cigarettes in Voter Fraud Scheme

by Cristina Laila
November 24, 2018

Homeless person bribed with $1 for forged signature; photo via LAPD

Nine people are facing felony charges for bribing homeless people on Skid Row in Los Angeles with cash and cigarettes in exchange for forged signatures. 

According to the DA, none of the homeless people were charged.

Skid Row, a very poor section of Los Angeles is full of hundreds of homeless people who are routinely targeted in voter fraud schemes. “It’s been going on for years,” LAPD officer Deon Joseph told KABC.

One of the people who were arrested reportedly set up a table outside of Midnight Mission, a place where homeless people line up for food and shelter.

The LA Times reported:

A forged signature swapped for $1 — or sometimes a cigarette.

The crude exchange played out hundreds of times on L.A.’s skid row during the 2016 election cycle and again this year, prosecutors said Tuesday as they announced criminal charges against nine people accused in a fraud scheme.

Using cash and cigarettes as lures, the defendants approached homeless people on skid row and asked them to forge signatures on state ballot measure petitions and voter registration forms, the district attorney’s office said. The defendants — some of whom were scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday — face several criminal charges, including circulating a petition with fake names, voter fraud and registering a fictitious person.

The charges, which were filed three weeks ago but made public Tuesday, followed a Los Angeles Police Department crackdown on suspected election fraud on skid row earlier in the year.

“They paid individuals to sign the names,” Officer Deon Joseph, the senior lead officer on skid row, told The Times in September. “That’s an assault on our democracy.”

The identities of the nine people facing felony charges according to the LA Times:

Washington, Harold Bennett, 53, and Louis Thomas Wise, 36, face up to six years and four months in prison. The others charged — Richard Howard, 62, Rose Makeda Sweeney, 42, Christopher Joseph Williams, 59, Jakara Fati Mardis, 35, Norman Hall, 61, and Nickey Demelvin Huntley, 44 — face up to four years and eight months in prison.

Oddly, none of the reports would say if the people bribing the homeless were Democrats or Republicans.

There is only one party notorious for registering dead people, illegal aliens and bribing homeless people with alcohol and cigarettes, so draw your own conclusions.

Yet another arrest by your @LAPD_RESET officers for Election Code Fraud. Three people booked on Felony charges. Homeless individuals were getting paid $1.00 or less for a forged signature on a State ballot measure. #VoterFraud #SkidRow pic.twitter.com/uulOo1XsNv

— Captain Marc Reina (@LAPDMarcReina) September 22, 2018