A federal grand jury has indicted a forty-three-year-old Georgia woman in defrauding the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the Department of Justice said.
On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Puerto Rico. FEMA sought vendors to provide self-heating meal to the island. Tiffany Brown received a $156 million contract to provide 30 million self-heating meals for Puerto Ricans in the wake of the devastating hurricane in 2017. Federal investigators claimed that she provided only 50,000 meals and none of them were self-heating as promised. U.S. Justice officials say Brown also plagiarized the proposal she pitched to the federal government to help her receive the funds, according to the department.
FEMA claims the woman also lied about the timing of deliveries and status of suppliers by using false documents. On October 19, 2017, FEMA ended its contract with the woman and her company. After the contract ended, she allegedly attempted to lie to FEMA to secure more payments from the agency.
The federal judge charged her with 11 counts of major disaster fraud, 14 counts of wire fraud, one count of theft of government money and three counts of money laundering.
She is currently awaiting trial where she could serve time for the charges.
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