Before she assumed office in 2022, Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D., Fla.) was a perennial candidate on the fringes, challenging incumbent Alcee Hastings (D., Fla.) in the 2018 and 2020 primaries. She raised less than $110,000 during those campaigns, both of which she lost in landslides.
And then Hastings died on April 6, 2021. Cherfilus-McCormick wound up taking his vacated seat after winning a December 2021 primary election by just five votes. This time, money wasn’t a concern—Cherfilus-McCormick put $2.6 million of her own money into her campaign, a major feat for someone who reported earning only $86,000 the year prior.
The same day Hastings died, the Florida Department of Emergency Management (FDEM) received an invoice from Trinity Health Care Services, whose CEO at the time was Cherfilus-McCormick. It was the first of 17 invoices that Trinity submitted to the state in spring 2021 that brought the firm $5.8 million in taxpayer funds “that it was not entitled to and had not earned,” the FDEM later alleged in a December 2024 lawsuit accusing the company of theft by “conversion.” Trinity didn’t return those mispaid funds in 2021. Instead, it paid $6.2 million in “profit sharing fees” to Cherfilus-McCormick, who then doled out more than $4.2 million in loans to her 2021 and 2022 campaigns—efforts that raised less than $280,000 from people not named Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick.
The House Ethics Committee is now investigating whether Cherfilus-McCormick used Trinity’s allegedly stolen taxpayer funds to bankroll her campaigns in 2021 and 2022, alongside a slew of other potential violations of federal laws concerning her covert dealings with a state political action committee and an unregistered nonprofit group that paid for her campaign ads.
Some aspects of the allegations against Cherfilus-McCormick have previously been reported by outlets including the Washington Post, which framed the matter as “ethical worries” for the Florida Democrat. But a Washington Free Beacon review found that several members of Cherfilus-McCormick’s family—her husband, brother, mother, father, and sister-in-law—played roles in the alleged schemes.
“The scope of this scheme is unprecedented, and this may just be the tip of the iceberg,” watchdog attorney Dan Backer told the Free Beacon. “Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is a straight up crook—embezzling taxpayer funds to line her pockets and fund her campaign—and she and her whole crooked family should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Backer’s group, the Coolidge-Reagan Foundation, filed a criminal referral in August to Florida attorney general James Uthmeier alleging Cherfilus-McCormick “engaged in fraud and embezzlement to divert millions of dollars from Florida taxpayers” to finance her campaigns. Several other watchdog groups across the ideological spectrum have also filed complaints demanding investigations into Cherfilus-McCormick.
Trinity is owned by Cherfilus-McCormick’s parents, Gabriel and Marie Smith, Florida business records show. Edwin Cherfilus, Trinity’s vice president of operations and Cherfilus-McCormick’s brother, submitted the company’s false invoices to the FDEM, including the first on April 6, 2021, the day Hastings died.
Trinity received the bulk of its misbegotten taxpayer funds on June 28, 2021, when the FDEM mistakenly cut a $5 million check to Trinity for a $50,000 invoice Edwin Cherfilus submitted that May. The state called that a “clerical error” in its lawsuit against Trinity. The FDEM also demanded the full return of at least 14 invoices it received from Cherfilus between April and June 2021. “The overpayments were not earned by, and were not owed to, Trinity,” the FDEM alleged.
The FDEM accused Trinity of theft in the form of “conversion” when it kept $5.8 million in mispaid taxpayer funds in 2021. Trinity settled with the FDEM in May, and agreed to repay $5.6 million over the next 15 years.
The FDEM did not return several requests for comment, and Cherfilus said the first false invoice he filed on April 6, 2021, had nothing to do with Hastings’s death or his sister’s political aspirations.
“Any outstanding billing issues have been long ago resolved through an approved settlement agreement,” Cherfilus told the Free Beacon. “Any politically motivated allegations of wrongdoing are false and slanderous. Full Stop.”
Trinity performed some legitimate work for Florida in 2021. In total, the FDEM distributed over $8 million to Cherfilus-McCormick’s company in 2021 across five COVID-related purchase orders, according to the Florida Department of Financial Services.
As the mispaid taxpayer funds started rolling into Trinity’s accounts in late June 2021, the company started doling out “profit sharing fees” totaling $6.2 million to Cherfilus-McCormick through two consulting firms she owns, she later reported in her congressional financial disclosure. At the same time, she started loaning millions of dollars to her campaign—a major increase from the $310,000 she’d lent before Trinity received the vast majority of the mispaid funds.
Starting July 8 through the end of 2021, Cherfilus-McCormick loaned her campaign $2.3 million across 38 installments, records show. During her 2022 reelection, Cherfilus-McCormick loaned another $1.6 million to her campaign across 61 installments.
Those figures don’t include a $2 million loan that McCormick gave her campaign on June 24, 2021, according to her FEC reports. That’s because about a week later, on July 2, 2021, her campaign returned that $2 million right back into Cherfilus-McCormick’s pocket, it reported to the FEC.
Bank records obtained by the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) show that SCM Consulting, one of the firms that distributed Trinity’s “profit sharing fees” to Cherfilus-McCormick, also made payments to and from her campaign in June and August 2021. Corporations are prohibited from donating to congressional campaigns. Cherfilus-McCormick didn’t disclose the payments to the FEC, a potential violation of federal law, the office reported.
The OCE is an official body that conducts preliminary probes into allegations of wrongdoing by members of the House. The office referred Cherfilus-McCormick to the House Ethics Committee for further investigation in September 2023. That investigation remains ongoing.
The House Ethics Committee is also investigating allegations that Cherfilus-McCormick violated federal laws over her dealings with Leadership in Action, a Florida state PAC that received funding in 2022 through a complex web of transactions involving Truth & Justice Inc., a company that claimed to be a nonprofit but never registered as such with the IRS, and another nonprofit group controlled by her husband, Corlie McCormick, and sister-in-law, Chantrell McCormick.
Corlie and Chantrell McCormick founded that nonprofit group, Progressive People Incorporated, in February 2022, Florida business records show. They tapped then-North Miami Beach commissioner Michael Joseph, who was elected the city’s mayor in 2024, to serve as the nonprofit’s president. Cherfilus-McCormick and Joseph are prominent members of the Haitian American community. Both attended the National Haitian American Elected Officials Network annual summit in March, where Cherfilus-McCormick delivered the keynote address.
In 2022, Progressive People Incorporated came upon $914,000 in contributions from undisclosed sources, it reported in IRS tax disclosure. From those funds, the Cherfilus family-controlled nonprofit paid $20,000 in consulting fees to Edwin Cherfilus and contributed $725,000 to Truth & Justice Inc. for “get out the vote activities.”
Corlie McCormick declined to comment when reached by phone. Chantrell McCormick and Joseph did not return requests for comment.
Truth & Justice Inc. is a Florida company founded in 2021 that told the state it would register with the IRS as a 501(c)4 nonprofit organization. But there’s no record that Truth & Justice Inc. ever did, nor is there any record it ever filed a Form 990 tax disclosure. The group’s registered agent, Gary Eugene Beasley, did not return a request for comment.
Truth & Justice Inc. spent at least $320,000 in 2022 in direct support of Cherfilus-McCormick’s campaign that year, according to records obtained by the OCE.
Truth & Justice Inc. spent $150,000 on mailings in 2022 that bore the false disclosure: “Paid for by Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick for Congress,” the OCE reported, adding that the Florida Democrat failed to report those payments as in-kind contributions to her campaign in a potential violation of federal campaign law.
The OCE found that Mark Goodrich, Cherfilus-McCormick’s de facto campaign manager, authorized the Truth & Justice wire transfers that paid for those mailings.
Several of the Florida Democrat’s staffers told the OCE that Goodrich “effectively served as Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick’s campaign manager.” But Goodrich never received payment from Cherfilus-McCormick’s campaign.
Instead, his salary was paid for by Leadership in Action, the Florida state PAC at the center of the House Ethics Committee’s investigation. In 2022, Truth & Justice Inc. donated $170,000 to Leadership in Action, according to Florida’s campaign finance database, which then paid Goodrich $104,000 that year.
In 2021, Leadership in Action was funded primarily by SCM Consulting, one of the firms that processed Trinity’s “profit sharing fees” to Cherfilus-McCormick that year. SCM Consulting contributed $261,000 to Leadership in Action in 2021, and in turn, the PAC paid Goodrich $140,000.
In addition to paying the salary of Cherfilus-McCormick’s de facto campaign manager, Leadership in Action provided other goods and services in connection to her campaign, OCE reported, despite laws that prohibit state PACs from spending money in connection to congressional candidates.
“Because Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick may have directed, transferred, or spent funds through Leadership in Action PAC (a state PAC) in connection with her campaign, she may have violated federal law,” the office wrote in its referral.
As for Goodrich, he said he holds no legal responsibility over Truth & Justice Inc.
“I am NOT an officer of Truth & Justice and have no legal responsibility to the nonprofit and you better not print that I did or do,” Goodrich told the Free Beacon.
When asked who served as the officer of Truth & Justice Inc. or if the group had ever filed its legally-required disclosures with the IRS, Goodrich accused the Free Beacon of peddling fake news and declined further comment.
“The Committee on Ethics has not yet concluded its review of the allegations, and no decision has been made at this time,” Cherfilus-McCormick told the Free Beacon. “As outlined in the Committee’s public statement, the referral for further review does not imply that any violation has occurred. I fully respect the process and remain committed to cooperating with the Committee as it works to bring this inquiry to a close.”
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