A daughter of former congressional candidate and ex-Broward County mayor Dale Holness is facing federal charges related to campaign funding fraud while working as a treasurer for her father’s county commission run in 2020.
Richelle Holness is facing charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and fraud in connection with emergency benefits according to the federal court filing from Dec. 27.
According to the charging document, prosecutors claim that from August 2019 through October 2020, Richelle Holness diverted funds from her father’s campaign for her own personal spending for items such as liquor, fast food, airline tickets, and clothing.
Richelle Holness issued checks from her father’s campaign account and filed reports falsely claiming that the money was used for printing, consulting and other services that would help the campaign, the court documents said.
She allegedly directed three co-conspirators who received the money to return it to her, by either a cashier’s check, another check or through the mobile payment service Cash App.
The documents noted multiple instances involving thousands of dollars that were issued from the campaign account and returned to Richelle Holness.
The documents said Richelle Holness also claimed she was unemployed as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to obtain emergency funds from the Department of Labor.
Dale Holness served on the Broward County Commission beginning in 2010 and was the county’s mayor in 2020.
In 2020, he ran to replace the late Rep. Alcee Hastings in Florida’s 20th Congressional District 20, but lost by just five votes in the Democratic primary to health care company CEO Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick.
He ran for the district seat against Cherfilus-McCormick again in 2022 and again lost the primary, this time by nearly 27,000 votes.
The charges against Richelle Holness come after the former mayor’s other daughter, Damara Holness, pled guilty back in 2021 for obtaining hundreds of thousands of dollars in coronavirus relief loans by submitting false tax and payroll information for her consulting business, federal prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said she applied for a $300,000 Paycheck Protection Program loan in June 2020 on behalf of her Plantation-based consulting business Holness Consulting, Inc.
On the loan application, Holness claimed the company employed 18 people and spent an average of $120,000 each month on payroll, prosecutors said. The company has zero employees and no payroll expenses.
