Federal authorities have arrested a Victorville man, charging him and two others in an alleged scheme that paid people on Skid Row to sign ballot petitions using the stolen identities of registered voters. The indictments point to a multi-month operation that aimed to bypass standard legislative processes through fraudulent means.
James Brass, 47, of Victorville, allegedly managed a team of signature collectors and gathered signatures himself for ballot petitions intended to shape California law. According to a federal indictment returned last Wednesday, prosecutors also know Brass by the nickname “Lord” and state he controlled a company named Pinnacle Brass LLC.
Working with Brass, two petition circulators—Courtney Price, 49, of Jacksonville, Fla., and Jateisha Herron, 33, of Boron, Calif.—were also charged in the indictment. While Brass pleaded not guilty during an initial court appearance in federal court in Riverside and was ordered released on a $10,000 bond, Price and Herron have not yet been arrested and could not be reached for comment. Brass’s trial is currently set for November 2.
All three are charged with conspiracy to commit identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony. Brass and Price face additional charges of identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. If convicted, each count could carry a sentence of up to five years in prison.
The alleged scheme, spanning from February to August of this year, leveraged the state Constitution's initiative process, which allows citizens to directly enact statutes and constitutional amendments by collecting a significant number of signatures from registered voters. To meet these high signature quotas, proponents often hire petition management companies.
According to the indictment, Brass, Price, and Herron allegedly used a database to pinpoint registered California voters. Brass and Price would then purportedly distribute these stolen voter identities, paying individuals on Skid Row to copy the personal information onto ballot initiative petitions and sign the petitions fraudulently in the registered voters' names. After this, Brass and Herron allegedly signed declarations on the petitions, falsely affirming they had witnessed the named registered voters sign and that, to their knowledge, each signature was “the genuine signature of the person whose name it purports to be.”
Prosecutors allege the fraudulent petitions were then submitted to various petition coordinators to receive payments from a petition management company. Brass reportedly received approximately $41,600 from coordinators working with one such company.
First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, who characterized the case on X as “California Election Fraud,” stated that the defendants “allegedly used people, including members of Skid Row’s vulnerable homeless population, to try to cover up their tracks.” Essayli added in a news release that the charged conduct “undermines the confidence voters have in our election systems, and we will vigorously investigate and charge anyone involved.”
