Former Charlotte Councilwoman Tiawana Brown Gets Prison Time in COVID Fraud Case

A federal judge sentenced former Charlotte councilwoman Tiawana Brown to 10 months in prison for a felony COVID fraud conspiracy — a decision he second-guessed after an outburst at the end of Tuesday morning’s three-hour hearing.

Brown appeared beside her daughters as U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell reprimanded the women for stealing, applauded their perseverance and chastised the government’s attorney for recommending sentences that were too light.

A combination of wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy charges filed last year detailed how Brown and her two daughters submitted false documents and employee records to get government pandemic relief money in 2020 and 2021. According to court documents, Brown used the taxpayer-funded loans on a throne, horse-drawn carriage and other lavish details for her 50th birthday party, and the family together used it on Louis Vuitton merchandise.

The expenses were “frivolous beyond measure,” Bell said at the Tuesday sentencing inside uptown’s U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. Each woman walked into the fourth-floor courtroom without the luxury bags they wore to earlier hearings.

As Bell readied to sentence the family on the conspiracy charges they admitted to in plea deals earlier this year, Brown pressed her palms into a prayer, looked to the ceiling and raised her red painted fingertips above her head. Bell sentenced Brown to prison while sparing Tijema Brown, 32, and Antoinette Rouse, 34, with two years of probation with four months of house arrest. The Trump-appointed judge also ruled each woman was responsible for paying the government back $137,280.09, even though they each received different amounts of that sum.

Rouse was the least culpable, Bell found, agreeing with her attorney. Tijema Brown volunteered for the first time Tuesday that she was the driving force behind the family’s fraud. Bell applauded the admission and said he was sure the daughters wouldn’t end up in criminal court again.

Bell wasn’t as sure about 55-year-old Tiawana Brown, he said. She previously served time in prison for student loan fraud in the 1990s and was Charlotte council’s first formerly incarcerated person on Charlotte’s council. Before pleading guilty, she claimed the charges were a political attack aimed at removing her from city council.

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Bell opened Tuesday’s lengthy hearing by chastising the federal government for “manipulating” the sentencing guidelines in the family’s case. Defense attorneys and assistant U.S. attorney Matthew Warren agreed on sentencing guidelines that were much too light and skewed toward probation, Bell said. It is the federal prosecutor’s responsibility to calculate guideline ranges.

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