Former Democrat Congressman Indicted on Over Two Dozen Charges

TJ Cox, a former U.S. Representative from California, has been charged with two dozen counts of charges for wire fraud and money laundering.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the charges in an Aug. 16 press release.

According to the DOJ, the charges include 15 counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of money laundering, one count of financial institution fraud, and one count of campaign contribution fraud.

The DOJ said that Cox allegedly “perpetrated multiple fraud schemes targeting companies he was affiliated with and their clients and vendors.”

Specifically, Cox created unauthorized, unrecorded bank accounts and used a series of “false representations, pretenses, and promises” to divert clients’ money into those accounts. In the five-year period between 2013 and 2018, Cox allegedly used this method to obtain over $1.7 million in client money and company loans and investment.

Further, the DOJ release says, Cox allegedly “received mortgage loan funds from a lender for a property purchase by submitting multiple false representations to the lender, including fabricated bank statements and false statements that Cox intended to live in the property as his primary residence.”

However, this was a misrepresentation by Cox, who intended in fact to rent out the purchased home.

Other charges involve a scheme by which Cox fraudulently obtained a $1.5 million construction loan to develop Granite Park in Fresno, California. The loan was diverted to a nonprofit run by Cox and a business partner, but the organization on its own could not qualify without a financially viable guarantor.

To get around this, Cox allegedly promised that one of his affiliated companies would guarantee the loan. To make this transaction look legitimate, Cox presented a false board representation suggesting that the board of directors of the guarantor company had agreed to back the loan.

In fact, the DOJ report says,

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