Federal agents arrested a 47-year-old California man who allegedly ran a months-long scheme paying homeless people on Los Angeles' Skid Row to sign ballot initiative petitions using stolen identities of registered voters.

James Brass, also known as "Lord," was taken into federal custody early Thursday in Victorville, California, about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Federal prosecutors charged Brass and two co-defendants, Courtney Price, 49, of Jacksonville, Florida, and Jateisha Herron, 33, of Boron, California, with conspiracy to commit identity fraud in furtherance of a state felony. Brass and Price face an additional count of identity fraud. Each count carries up to five years in federal prison.

The charges describe a petition fraud operation that ran from February through August. Brass allegedly pulled voter identities from a database, handed the information to homeless individuals in Skid Row, one of the largest concentrations of homeless people in the country, and paid them to sign ballot initiative petitions as though they were those registered voters. Price and Herron worked for Brass, according to the charges.

Brass was expected to appear in court Thursday. The arrest status of Price and Herron has not been publicly confirmed.

Brass collected $41,600 from a single petition company

Federal prosecutors say Brass orchestrated the scheme by managing a team of signature collectors and by gathering signatures himself. One unnamed petition management company paid Brass $41,600 for his work. The charges do not identify the company or specify which ballot initiatives the petitions were meant to qualify.

After homeless individuals signed the petitions under stolen names, Brass and Herron signed sworn declarations on the petition sheets. Those declarations stated that they had personally witnessed the named registered voters sign and that each signature was, to the best of their knowledge, "the genuine signature of the person whose name it purports to be." Neither claim was true, prosecutors allege.

The bogus petitions were then turned in to petition coordinators. How many fraudulent signatures were submitted, and whether any successfully helped qualify a ballot initiative, remain unanswered questions in the public record so far.

The case fits a pattern of aggressive FBI fraud enforcement under the current administration, with the bureau making election integrity a stated priority.

Patel calls election security a 'top priority' for the FBI

FBI Director Kash Patel framed the case as part of the bureau's broader election security mission. In a statement to Fox News Digital, Patel said:

"Securing American elections from criminal interference is of the upmost importance to this FBI. For at least 6 months in 2026, these subjects were allegedly paying homeless people on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles to sign petitions in support of ballot initiatives, all using stolen identities of registered voters."

Patel added a broader pledge.

"Election security will always be a top priority of this FBI."

Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said the alleged conduct "undermines the confidence voters have in our election systems." Essayli added that his office "will vigorously investigate and charge anyone involved in corrupting our elections."

The DOJ's election integrity push has already produced results elsewhere. A Honduran national was recently charged with voter fraud in what officials described as the first federal arrest under the department's election integrity initiative.

Skid Row's vulnerable population exploited for pocket change

The scheme's mechanics reveal how cheaply election fraud can be manufactured when the targets are desperate. Brass and his co-defendants allegedly recruited homeless individuals from Skid Row, people living in one of the most visible concentrations of poverty in the United States, and handed them voter identity information to copy onto petition sheets. The amount paid to each individual per signature is not specified in the charges.

The real victims here are twofold. Homeless individuals were used as tools in a fraud operation, and registered voters had their identities stolen and attached to petition signatures they never made. The scheme did not involve voting itself, but it targeted the ballot initiative process, the mechanism California voters use to put measures directly before the electorate.

That distinction matters. Petition fraud undermines the same democratic infrastructure that ballot fraud does. When forged signatures help qualify an initiative, every legitimate signer's voice is diluted. And when the fraud is discovered, it feeds public doubt about whether any part of the system is clean.

The FBI has also been active on other fronts. Agents recently raided an Ohio voter group's headquarters as part of a separate fraud investigation, signaling that the bureau's enforcement posture extends well beyond California.

Federal fraud cases mount under current DOJ leadership

The Skid Row petition case adds to a growing roster of federal fraud prosecutions. From a Massachusetts mayor charged with looting COVID relief funds to multi-billion-dollar fraud schemes, the DOJ has signaled it intends to use federal identity fraud statutes aggressively.

In this case, the underlying state felony referenced in the federal charges has not been publicly identified. But the federal hook, identity fraud, allowed prosecutors to bring the case in the Central District of California, where Essayli's office has jurisdiction.

Several questions remain open. Investigators have not publicly disclosed which database Brass used to harvest voter identities, how the petition management company vetted, or failed to vet, the signatures it received, or whether any of the tainted petitions made it through the qualification process. The DOJ's willingness to pursue fraud cases through federal courts suggests prosecutors believe the evidence trail extends further than what has been charged so far.

For years, Americans who raised concerns about election integrity were told the problem was imaginary. A $41,600 payout, a stack of forged petitions, and three federal defendants say otherwise.