News Roundup

Indicted Congressman’s Brother Charged with Paying Bribes

The Times-Picayune
by Gordon Russell
Wednesday April 02, 2008

Mose Jefferson, the eldest brother and chief political strategist of embattled U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, was indicted by a federal grand jury today on charges that he repeatedly bribed Ellenese Brooks-Simms, the former president of the Orleans Parish School Board, to ensure her support for a computer-based algebra curriculum he was selling.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten detailed the indictment at an 11 a.m. news conference at his office on Poydras Street. In total, Jefferson is charged with seven felony counts, including one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, three counts of bribery, one count of money laundering and two counts of obstruction of justice, Letten said.

“It’s important to understand that we are winning this battle against corruption,” said Jim Bernazzani, special agent in charge of the FBI’s New Orleans office, who appeared alongside Letten at the event. “We have changed the direction of the tsunami. A couple of years ago, it was much more prevalent.”

Letten said he hoped that the charges would help to clean up a school system that has been plagued by large-scale fraud as well as petty thievery.

“We hope that by exposing things like this, we can encourage our School Board and our public officials to build a better system, one that is resistant to abuses and that can provide our kids with a top-notch education,” Letten said.

Mose Jefferson’s lawyer, Ike Spears, did not return messages left Tuesday seeking comment. Jefferson is due to be arraigned next Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Alma Chasez.

The charges come as little surprise: Brooks-Simms pleaded guilty last summer to accepting the bribes from a businessman described in court documents as “Mr. A” and identified by sources close to the case as Mose Jefferson.

Also, in at least two subsequent filings in Brooks-Simms’ case, Jefferson was identified by name. And officials from JRL Enterprises — the makers of “I CAN Learn,” the algebra tutorial Jefferson was peddling — long ago acknowledged that the congressman’s brother worked for them.

All told, Mose Jefferson was paid $913,000 in commissions for selling up to $14 million in product to the School Board, Letten said Wednesday. It could not be determined Wednesday whether that entire sum had been paid to JRL.

The charges have no direct bearing on William Jefferson, who is awaiting trial in Virginia on 16 unrelated corruption charges. But the case does have close links to him. JRL Enterprises founder John Lee has held fund-raisers for the congressman, who in turn has been a big supporter of “I CAN Learn.” Rep. Jefferson arranged for at least some of the $45 million in congressional earmarks the company has received.

The exact amount of money William Jefferson set aside for the company is unclear, because until recently bills containing earmarks that were passed by Congress did not identify which member inserted the request.

Letten declined to answer questions about William Jefferson’s role in the alleged scam. He likewise said he could not discuss JRL’s relative culpability in the matter, though he stressed that neither the company nor any of its officials has been charged with a crime.

The alleged payments from Jefferson to Brooks-Simms were passed through intermediaries, according to court documents. Two people have pleaded guilty to playing a role in transferring the money: Norco businessman Burnell Moliere, an ally of the congressman, and Brooks-Simms’ daughter, Stacy Simms.

Both of them, along with Brooks-Simms herself, are expected to testify against Mose Jefferson if the case against him goes to trial. Sources close to the case also have said that Brooks-Simms’ secretly recorded several conversations she had with Mose Jefferson after she had signed a plea agreement with the government.

The indictment did not directly mention the taped conversations, but the two obstruction of justice counts appear to stem from two meetings between Brooks-Simms and Mose Jefferson in May 2007. At both meetings, Jefferson allegedly tried to persuade Brooks-Simms to use “several fabricated stories he had concocted” to explain her receipt of money from him, the indictment says. Brooks-Simms pleaded guilty shortly after those meetings.

Moliere pleaded guilty in January to a crime called “structuring,” which means he helped conceal the bribes by cashing checks from Jefferson and doling out money to Brooks-Simms and various designees in smaller portions to avoid triggering federal notifications.

Simms admitted that she allowed a bank account to be opened in her name and “used as a clearinghouse for bribe payments” to her mother.

Neither Simms nor Moliere is accused of profiting directly from those transactions. However, Moliere’s janitorial company, AME Services Inc., did get a hand from Brooks-Simms during her tenure on the School Board, when she led a successful push to broadly expand the company’s contract. Her son-in-law worked for the firm.

A sprawling federal probe of the School Board has netted more than 30 convictions to date, Letten said Wednesday. He said he could not discuss precisely how Brooks-Simms and Mose Jefferson attracted the feds’ attention.

In the 16-count indictment of William Jefferson issued by a grand jury last year, Mose Jefferson emerged as a key player who was hired by firms that the congressman, allegedly helped with trade deals.

Separately, local FBI officials in 2006 announced an investigation of taxpayer-supported nonprofit organizations with close ties to Mose Jefferson and other family members after a Times-Picayune story noted that Jefferson was driving a $30,000 car that had been donated to the city after Katrina. Jefferson’s longtime companion, former City Councilwoman Renee Gill Pratt, likewise was behind the wheel of one of the donated cars. Both vehicles have since been returned.

The same story noted that several of the nonprofits tied to the Jeffersons, as well as the city of New Orleans, had been paying high rents for a Central City office building owned by B.E.P. Consulting, a company Mose Jefferson incorporated. That company — whose initials stand for “Business, Education, Politics,” according to the indictment — figures into the Brooks-Simms case as well.

The money Jefferson received from JRL Enterprises went into a B.E.P. account, according to the indictment. B.E.P.’s bank records were subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in late 2006, shortly after the newspaper story about the cars and the charities appeared.

Prosecutors have not indicated whether they believe that JRL Enterprises, which hired Mose Jefferson, did anything wrong. The indictment notes that the company hired Jefferson in part because of his close relationship with Brooks-Simms, but Letten continued to steer clear of drawing conclusions about the company or its officials.

JRL Enterprises president John Lee has said the company did not. In a previous interview, Lee described the commissions paid to Mose Jefferson as the going rate for “introductions to the decision-makers.” Lee has said he does not know which members of Congress arranged for JRL’s earmarks; regardless of who inserted them, the company’s hiring of Mose Jefferson was unrelated to the earmarks, he said.