Federal prosecutors charged the treasurer of a losing 2021 campaign for Brooklyn borough president with wire fraud for her role in a straw-donor scheme, according to filings released Wednesday.
Queens resident Erlene King, a 2009 City Council candidate herself, served as the treasurer for Anthony Jones when he ran in the 2021 race to replace Eric Adams — who was term-limited out and running for mayor — as Brooklyn borough president in 2021.
Now, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York allege in an eight-page indictment that King repeatedly sent money through CashApp to prospective donors and they put the same sums into donations to Jones’ borough president campaign.
King’s alleged scheme brought in at least $25,000 in false donations while forging corresponding records that were hoping to generate at least $400,000 in public matching funds, federal prosecutors said. The indictment doesn’t say where the money Jones obtained from the allegedly fake donors initially came from.
Neither King nor Jones — the district leader in Brownsville’s 55th Assembly District who is an ally of the Brooklyn Democratic machine — returned requests for comment Wednesday evening.
Ultimately the project was a failed one. The city’s Campaign Finance Board refused to grant Jones’ campaign any matching funds, writing that money given in another person’s name is “not only prohibited but also illegal,” according to the federal indictment.
“The priority of the New York City Campaign Finance Board is to uphold our city’s campaign finance rules and protect taxpayer dollars,” said Tim Hunter, the board’s press secretary, adding that the agency always cooperates with law enforcement when they uncover potential malfeasance. “We applaud the Eastern District of New York for their efforts to safeguard the integrity of our local democracy by ensuring that criminal schemes like the one alleged today are uncovered.”
THE CITY previously reported in 2022 that he CFB had cited 28 suspicious donations in their decision not to grant Jones matching funds for his 2021 BP run. At a public meeting of the board in Nov. 18 of 2021 Jones denied any knowledge of wrongdoing.
“I’m concerned, I’m a little confused,” he told of the board. “I believe that everything we were asked to do through the campaign, we did it.”
Separately, Jones itted to THE CITY in 2022 that “somebody” in his political club had forged signatures in an attempt to oust political rivals from volunteer party positions.
Jones ended his failed 2021 borough president campaign in the red, spending $728,000 more than he’d brought in, records show. He was trounced at the ballot box in the June 2021 primary, securing just 8,567 votes out of 346,203 cast, or less than one percent. Current Borough President Antonio Reynoso sailed to victory with 235,118 votes.
Another candidate in that race, former Adams protege Lamor Whitehead, was sentenced early this year to nine years in prison for wire fraud and attempted extortion unrelated to that election.
The case against King, handled by the Eastern District of New York’s Public Integrity Section, is the latest example of state and federal law enforcement honing in on the city’s generous public matching campaign finance program, which expanded under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, to match some small dollar political contributions as much as $8 to $1.
Adams himself was charged last week by federal prosecutors in the neighboring Southern District with crimes including wire fraud, for having allegedly “participated in a scheme to fraudulently obtain matching funds.”
