Federal authorities charged three people on Sept. 10 in the second major bust this year involving petition collectors paying homeless people in downtown Los Angeles to use stolen identities to sign ballot initiative petitions.
In this case, two Californians and one Floridian were arrested and charged with one count of conspiracy to commit identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony, according to First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.
The arrests are part of a statewide federal operation to crack down on election fraud announced on Sept. 5.
“The charged conduct undermines the confidence voters have in our election systems,” Essayli said in a post on X. “We will vigorously investigate and charge anyone involved in corrupting our elections.”
James Brass, 47, of Victorville, California, was arrested on Thursday morning and was expected to make his initial appearance later in the day in Riverside District Court.
Two petition circulators who allegedly worked for Brass—Courtney Price, 49, of Jacksonville, Florida, and Jateisha Herron, 33, of Boron, California—were also charged in the federal grand jury indictment.
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Brass and Price each have an additional charge of identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony, prosecutors said.
“These defendants are charged with using stolen identities of registered voters to manufacture signatures on ballot petitions used to shape California law,” Essayli said.
It is unknown whether any legal representative has been appointed for the defendants at the time of publication.
The federal indictments came after independent journalist James O’Keefe published a video of an undercover investigation on March 24 of an extensive signature collection operation on Skid Row that allegedly offered the local homeless community cash in exchange for their cooperation.
The video includes a clip in which a signature collector is seen telling a woman how to use the voter’s name he provides her with to sign each petition and explaining that she would be paid $3 for each signature.
In court documents, prosecutors said the defendants set up a table on Feb. 27 in the Skid Row neighborhood, accessed the voter database, and found voters’ names and addresses.
Then, the defendants allegedly wrote the names and addresses on scraps of paper to hand them to the homeless people, according to prosecutors.
Once the people signed the petitions, they gave them money, and the petitions were then turned in at a location in Ontario, California, the indictment alleges.
An encampment of homeless people in the Skid Row community in Los Angeles on June 28, 2024. Mario Tama/Getty Images
Operators were collecting signatures on several streets among the transient population on the day O’Keefe’s team was filming, he said in the video.
The federal indictment alleges Brass worked for a company that was hired by political organizations to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures for two ballot initiatives.
The signature gatherers needed to collect about 875,000 voter signatures to qualify a proposed constitutional amendment for the November ballot, and nearly 547,000 to get a proposed statute on the ballot, according to court documents.
The company charged significant fees to collect the signatures and charged for each one gathered. To do that, they contracted with outside workers to collect the signatures, prosecutors said.
Brass allegedly managed a team of signature collectors and also gathered signatures while Price and Herron collected signatures and worked for Brass, according to prosecutors.
Court documents allege signature collectors would access a voter database provided to the hired petition management company by the California Secretary of State that included every state voter’s name and address and showed whether the voter had previously signed a specific initiative petition.
Prosecutors said Brass, who controlled a company named Pinnacle Brass LLC, conspired with Price and Herron between February and August to travel to locations, including the Skid Row neighborhood populated by homeless camps in downtown Los Angeles, to carry out their alleged scheme.
After the homeless people would finish signing, the defendants would allegedly sign declarations at the bottom of the petitions claiming under penalty of perjury that they witnessed that each signature was “genuine.” Brass and Herron would then turn in the petitions and declarations to coordinators, according to prosecutors.
Central District of California First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington on Nov. 19, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times
Prosecutors allege Brass was paid about $41,600 to collect signatures.
If convicted, the defendants would face a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for each count.
The charges are the second to be handed down this year for paying Skid Row homeless people for signatures.
