An Atlanta business owner found guilty of making up lawyers, a business settlement and more in connection with landing a nine-figure government contract in the wake of Hurricane Maria has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Tiffany Brown showed no emotion Tuesday as she was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash Jr. on 32 counts of fraud, theft and money laundering in association with a $156 million Federal Emergency Management Agency contract.
Brown, a one-time mayoral candidate, declined to speak when given the opportunity during her sentencing hearing. She wiped away tears as her mother, sister, aunt and friend told the judge about the good she does in her community.
“What has been perceived as an aloofness is my sister trying to hold on to her sanity,” Tameka Barber said in the courtroom. “What you’ve heard here today is not at all the sister I know Tiffany to be. She doesn’t do schemes. She’s not a manipulator. She has a pure heart.”
The judge said Brown hasn’t shown any remorse for her “multiple, blatantly fraudulent misrepresentations” behind her securing the FEMA contract and leveraging it to steal $1 million from a litigation funding group. He said she duped her own lawyer and created a fake settlement agreement and lawyers in addition to lying to FEMA about her ability to fulfill the contract.
“She lied about all of that,” Thrash said. “All of that was a lie.”
Brown must pay $1.7 million in restitution to FEMA, the litigation funding group and two meal providers she contracted with. She must spend five years under supervision once released from prison.
Thrash allowed Brown, who has been on bond since October 2022, to report to federal prison in coming weeks, after her niece’s graduation in May. He recommended she serve her sentence at a facility close to Atlanta, if possible.
Brown’s mother and aunt said she is a strong, kindhearted go-getter who did her best. They said she encourages young people to attend college and helps out at her church.
Brown was found guilty in January of every charge she faced. The verdict came after 22 prosecution witnesses, including FEMA officials, an FBI agent and Brown’s former attorney, testified against her. Brown chose not to present a defense.
On Friday, Brown appealed the verdict and her bond conditions.
In the sentencing hearing Tuesday, prosecutor Alex Sistla said Brown is conniving and devious. He said she took advantage of FEMA’s desperation to source meals for hurricane survivors and continued to defraud others after getting caught by FEMA. He asked that she be sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison.
“Ms. Brown is a serial fraudster. She’s lied to everyone,” Sistla said. “She will say anything to anyone to get what she wants.”
Joe Austin, an attorney for Brown, asked that she receive a 10-year prison sentence. He said Brown tried to satisfy the contract and gave a meal supplier $100,000 of the $255,000 she received from FEMA.
“Based on her understanding, her intent could not have been ‘I’m going to, by procuring this contract, get myself $156 million unlawfully,’” Austin said. “A person may be guilty of fraud, they may have conducted a fraud to get a contract, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they intended to cause financial harm in the full amount of the contract price.”
But Brown was accused of spending at least some of the funds she obtained from the scheme on luxury items and a trip to Coachella music festival in California.
Brown promised FEMA in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Maria that she could provide 30 million self-heating meals in 30 days, at a rate of 1 million daily. But after securing the contract on Oct. 3, 2017, Brown only managed to have 50,000 nonconforming dehydrated meals delivered to Florida destined for Puerto Rico, prosecutors said.
FEMA ended Brown’s contract on Oct. 19, 2017, but paid her $255,000 for the 50,000 meals that were delivered.
Brown was convicted on 11 counts of major disaster fraud, 14 counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering and a single count of theft of government money in relation to the FEMA contract. She was also convicted on three additional counts of wire fraud stemming from her subsequent efforts to secure loans worth more than $1 million based on a lawsuit settlement she invented.
Brown got more than $1 million from the Legal Funding Group of Georgia based on her fake settlement with an Ohio-based freight company she blamed for the loss of her FEMA contract, according to testimony from several trial witnesses.
Retired FBI agent Davida Law, who began investigating Brown in 2018, testified that Brown used the loans to attend the Coachella music festival in California and go shopping at Louis Vuitton stores in Atlanta, Paris and Dubai, where she spent about $41,000.
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