Category: Philadelphia Politics

Philadelphia congressional candidate Chris Rabb is one of many people who say Yolanda Brown owes them money.

But none of them have been able to find her. And the allegations of impropriety against the political consultant are piling up.

Last month, Rabb said that Brown, his former campaign treasurer, made “unauthorized withdrawals” from his campaign account, and that an untold amount of money had gone missing.

Weeks earlier, Brown was accused of robbing campaign donations from another Democrat more than a thousand miles away in Florida.

Brown, a Florida-based finance manager and campaign consultant who works primarily with Democrats and social justice groups, has over the last decade faced criminal charges for embezzlement and other allegations of financial fraud in at least four states totaling in excess of half a million dollars, according to an Inquirer review of hundreds of pages of court documents, campaign finance filings, and business records.

The misdeeds Brown, 46, has been accused of range from shaving money from campaign accounts to setting up sham jobs and billing nonprofits for work that was never performed. Two years ago, Brown paid $330,000 after pleading no contest to felony embezzlement in California, where prosecutors said she stole from a nonprofit and set up a fake loan under the name of a consultancy where she previously worked.

Through it all, she avoided jail time and, using three different surnames, continued to work on political campaigns from Florida to Philly, persuading candidates to trust her with access to their bank accounts and thousands of dollars in donations to their causes.

Khambrel Davis, a Florida-based criminal defense attorney representing Brown, says this is all a misunderstanding. He said that Brown is the victim, and that a rogue employee of Brown’s firm stole from the PACs in Philadelphia and St. Petersburg and then disappeared “in the wind.”

Davis said Brown reached out to law enforcement but has not heard back.

“[Brown] just can’t locate her, and now it’s kind of all coming back on her,” Davis said in a phone interview Saturday. “Her history is coming up, so everyone’s just assuming she must have done this. They’re kind of putting together this narrative that she’s just this habitual thief.”

Records show Brown as the only employee of her firm who ever filed campaign finance paperwork for the campaigns now accusing her of theft.

Today, Brown’s whereabouts are unknown to the campaigns she once worked for. Her firm’s address listed in campaign finance filings is a mailbox rental shop, and her website went dark in February. She is registered to vote in Coral Springs, Fla., a suburb of Fort Lauderdale.

Davis, who said he has been in contact with Brown, declined to say where she is. He insisted she has been “transparent and forthcoming with everyone.”

Several other campaign consultants based in Florida told The Inquirer that they have identified suspicious transactions made last year while Brown had access to their accounts. And multiple law enforcement agencies are investigating Brown’s accounting, including the FBI, according to two sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing probe.

Before Brown joined Rabb’s campaign in August, she worked with high-profile Democrats in New York, Illinois, and Florida — at times using her married name, Yolanda Rumph.

Her clients included former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who waged a closely watched campaign for Florida governor against Ron DeSantis in 2018. Gillum was indicted for making fraudulent transactions out of the same political action committee that Brown worked for — but prosecutors dropped the charges in 2023 after a jury deadlocked and the court declared a mistrial.

Rabb, a progressive who is considered among a handful of front-runners in the race to replace outgoing U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, has said he is committed to continuing his campaign for the 3rd Congressional District seat, despite losing money that he is unlikely to see returned before the May 19 primary.

In January, before allegations of the missing money became public, Rabb was already significantly trailing the financial front-runner in the race. Records show he had about $100,000 in his campaign account at the start of the year, while State Sen. Sharif Street reported having more than five times that amount.

Rabb’s campaign declined to say how much money was taken, citing the ongoing law enforcement investigation.

Abe White, Rabb’s spokesperson, said in a statement that the campaign identified the unauthorized withdrawals after finding errors in its most recent campaign finance filing, which encompasses fundraising and spending activity from October to December.

He said the campaign had protocols in place to reconcile accounts and “immediately took action” after coming across the suspicious activity.

“The campaign’s former treasurer manipulated every campaign safeguard in place,” White said. “It’s what these people do.”

Davis, Brown’s attorney, said his client intends to pay back the funds he alleges were stolen by the employee.

“She’s just going to take responsibility,” he said, “and try to remedy the situation.”

No warning signs until it was too late

Very few people working on political campaigns have access to the bank accounts powering their efforts. The accounts see thousands — and sometimes millions — of dollars flowing in and out in a relatively short period of time.

That means candidates put significant trust in their treasurers, who are official designees responsible for ensuring campaigns comply with finance laws.

Matthew Haverstick, a managing partner with Kleinbard LLC, a Philadelphia-based law firm that often works with political campaigns and causes, said it is essential that campaigns thoroughly vet campaign treasurers and compliance consultants.

“This is why you work hard at the front end of this stuff in campaigns,” Haverstick, who is not working for any candidate in the race, said of Rabb’s situation. “When you’re deep into a campaign and a problem like this blows up, it has the potential to end the campaign. So the right time to spend a little more money and try a little harder is before you hire somebody.”

Rabb, a five-term Pennsylvania state representative, entrusted his account to Brown shortly after launching his run for Congress in July. Rabb had not worked with Brown before, and records show no other campaign in Pennsylvania has paid her or her firm for work.

The three other candidates who have so far raised the most money in the 3rd Congressional District race have treasurers based in Philadelphia. But it’s not unheard of for candidates to use consultants and staff from out of state, especially when they are seeking federal office.

White, Rabb’s spokesperson, said Brown “came highly recommended” and “there was no reason for concern” when she was hired.

Elsewhere, other Democrats who hired Brown said they similarly saw no warning signs until it was too late.

In January, the chairperson of a PAC backing St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch said she had reported Brown to law enforcement for misspending $207,000.

Brown had worked with the group, called the Pelican PAC, for about a year. Campaign finance records show that last fall, several transactions were made to transfer money from the PAC account into O’Reilly Business LLC, a separate entity that Brown controls.

Davis said Brown’s employee also had access to that LLC, and said it was the employee who moved the money.

Adrienne Bogen, who heads the Pelican PAC, said Brown was removed as the PAC’s treasurer in January.

She was hired following “standard onboarding practices,” Bogen said.

“Nothing was identified that raised concerns,” she added.

In reality, Brown had been under indictment on 10 criminal charges in Alameda County, Calif., where she worked as a finance manager for Oakland-based consultancy BMWL & Partners. She was charged under the name “Yolanda Cheers.”

In 2019, prosecutors in court documents accused Brown — referring to her as “Cheers” — of routing money belonging to a nonprofit client of the consultancy to herself and then, years after being fired, taking out unauthorized loans in BMWL’s name. She faced charges of aggravated white-collar crime, grand theft by embezzlement, forgery, and identity theft, and could have faced years in prison.

The same year she was indicted in California, Brown faced legal trouble elsewhere. Authorities in Washington, D.C., accused her of fraud, allegations that came to light after she filed for bankruptcy in Minnesota.

Brown had previously worked as a grants manager for the local government in D.C. and owed the city $52,700 while filing for bankruptcy, the D.C. attorney general wrote in court papers. Authorities alleged that in 2014 and 2015, Brown asked two city contractors to hire her fiance, and she billed them for work that he supposedly completed — even though he was on an active-duty military assignment at the time.

The Minnesota bankruptcy case moved forward. Much of Brown’s debt was erased, but not the money that she owed in Washington.

On the other side of the country, the criminal case in California languished for nearly five years.

In February 2024, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced that her office had reached a plea deal. Brown pleaded no contest to one count of grand theft by embezzlement and was required to pay $330,000 in restitution. She served no jail time.

Davis cast the no-contest plea as Brown’s attempt to put the charges behind her — not as an admission of guilt.

“Court could be kind of dragging on people,” he said. “It’s a very big burden.”

‘Some people will inevitably give in to temptation’

After the campaign allegations against Brown in St. Petersburg and Philadelphia trickled out this year, others who have worked with her said they reported activity they think is suspicious to law enforcement.

Jamie Jodoin, a Florida-based political and financial consultant, said she worked on a PAC last year that hired Brown as its treasurer. She said Brown wired $25,000 out of the PAC’s bank account and later closed the account without notifying the candidate.

“We have no idea where that went,” Jodoin said.

Political campaigns, which are small and short-lived entities, often don’t carry insurance against internal theft. But they do usually have review processes.

The Federal Election Commission recommends candidates put in place internal controls such as risk assessment and monitoring in order to prevent the misappropriation of funds. The guidance says that bank statements should be reviewed by someone who is not also writing the checks.

“Absent some basic checks and balances,” the commission says in its recommendations, “some people will inevitably give in to temptation.”

White said the Rabb campaign had safeguards in place. But he added that, after the unauthorized withdrawals were identified, the campaign newly established “airtight financial protocols” such as “strengthening oversight and internal controls.”

The campaign recently named a new treasurer and hired a new compliance firm.

Bogen, of Welch’s PAC in St. Petersburg, said Brown’s access to internal systems and bank accounts was “immediately revoked” once it was discovered that she had made suspicious transactions.

Brown, Bogen said, “has not been heard from since.”