Atlanta woman heading to prison, paying $1.7M for defrauding FEMA in $156M hurricane relief contract
An Atlanta woman who was convicted of defrauding the Federal Management Agency on a contract to help with Hurricane Maria relief has learned her fate.
Tiffany Brown, 43, was sentenced to 12 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release. She was also ordered to pay more than $1.7 million in restitution.
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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.
A federal grand jury indicted Brown in September on 11 counts of major disaster fraud, 14 counts of wire fraud, one count of theft of government money, and three counts of money laundering.
Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico as a category 4 storm in 2017. After FEMA declared it a major disaster, the government agency started to look for vendors to provide over 40 million self-heating meals per week to the island.
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FEMA said that Brown submitted a proposal that her company, Tribute Contracting LLC, could assist and provide 10 million meals per day with 210 trucks. Brown's proposal also said the trucks were equipped with the staff and tools needed to make the deliveries, according to investigators.
Brown spoke to several national media outlets about the contract's termination as she said that she was a scapegoat for FEMA's process with small business contracts.
'I resent the fact that this is turning into an attack, it's an attack on FEMA using me as a vessel. Please don't use me as a vessel. if you want to attack FEMA or address FEMA's concerns please attack it from a more intelligent perspective instead of it being about me,' Brown told ABC News in 2018. Read the full ABC News report here.
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