WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A new 59-page report from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ethics outlines a series of alleged violations against U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla.
This comes after she was charged in November with 15 federal counts, accusing her of stealing funds that had been mistakenly overpaid to the health care company owned by her family.
The report details 27 counts of alleged fraudulent activities.
WATCH BELOW: House Ethics report details $6M in alleged fraud by Cherfilus-McCormick
Investigators said her company, Trinity Health Care Services, collected nearly $6 million in FEMA fund overpayments and transferred it to her campaign.
The new report claims Cherfilus-McCormick directly received a total of $2,297,360 from Trinity in 2021, excluding her regular salary.
Other allegations include that Cherfilus-McCormick's company, SCM Consulting, received $4,439,936 from Trinity.
"(Cherfilus-McCormick) deposited checks from Trinity into her personal bank accounts or the SCM Consulting bank account interchangeably, and the checks themselves indicated a variety of purposes," the report said. "More than half of the funds that were received by Trinity pursuant to the FDEM contract were disbursed to (Cherfilus-McCormick) and her family members."
The report outlined June 2021 text messages alleging Cherfilus-McCormick planned to loan money to her campaign to appear financially strong, then take it back.
"I am not planning on using that amount just leveraging" regarding a $2 million loan, the report said.
A senior advisor responded, saying, "Indeed. But nobody has to know that."
The report found that "on numerous occasions," the congresswoman's campaign committee "misreported contributions and expenditures on required FEC filings."
"Those errors include reporting the incorrect recipient, the incorrect amounts of the disbursement, and/or the incorrect date of the disbursement," the report said.
The Ethics Committee said that during the 2021-2022 election campaign, bank records for Cherfilus-McCormick's committee contained over $275,000 in expenditures that were not reported to the Federal Election Commission.
"The campaign committee misreported disbursements on nearly 170 occasions," the report said.
The Office of Congressional Ethics said in a previous report that Cherfilus-McCormick's income in 2021 was more than $6 million higher than in 2020, driven by nearly $5.75 million in consulting and profit-sharing fees received from Trinity Healthcare Services.
The committee met 12 times over the 118th and 119th Congresses to conduct its investigation, sending 30 requests for information, issuing 59 subpoenas, reviewing over 33,000 documents and conducting 28 witness interviews.
The House is now considering disciplinary action.
Read the full report below:
