On Thursday, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, and Ward 6 Councilman Aaron Banks all pleaded not guilty to an array of federal charges as part of a bribery investigation by the FBI. The trio stands accused of weaving a convoluted web of backdoor dealings in order to enrich themselves.
Since 2008, the city of Jackson has sought to develop a plot of land adjacent to the downtown Convention Center Complex. A multi-million-dollar loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was taken by the city to facilitate this development, contingent upon a deadline of June 30, 2025, to complete the project.
Owens, along with Jackson businessman Sherik Marve Smith, a relative of Owens, is said to have orchestrated a bribery conspiracy to ensure that two specific real estate developers from Nashville would be the party that won the project and that it passed approval from the city council. What Owens, Smith, and three other co-conspirators didn’t know was that they were doing business with undercover FBI agents.
According to court records unsealed Thursday, Owens was introduced by an unidentified witness to one of the undercover agents at a business owned by the DA in downtown Jackson in August of 2023. Two months later, Owens, Smith, and others took a private jet paid for by the FBI to meet with the fake developers in Nashville. At that meeting, Owens told the developers that he could effectively deliver the project to them – specifically because he and Smith “own enough of the city” to “get votes approved.”
During Owens’ re-election party in November of 2023, Owens apparently made it clear that his position as district attorney was simply an avenue for development opportunities.
“The full-time job is developing… This is the part-time job, to get leverage for the full-time job,” Owens told the pair of FBI agents, unprompted. “This is the part-time job to get the conversations and the access. Access equals the other s*** we’re trying to do.”
The next day, Owens and Smith negotiated an upfront payment of $250,000 to be paid to the two men and the unidentified witness who introduced Owens to the developers. Owens and Smith were to be paid $100,000 each, with the witness receiving $50,000.
Another private jet trip, again paid for by the FBI, took the trio to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for another meeting with the developers. In a private room on the yacht, Owens told the developers that receiving cash payment was “easier” and that he had brought a bag specifically to collect cash. He was then given $125,000 to be split between Owens, Smith, and the witness.
‘I’m not trying to overemphasize this, you guys, but my ability to prosecute people… there’s only one me,” Owens explained during the meeting. “So right now, every police agency comes to us. Everybody needs something. Every file comes to us. Everybody needs something fixed.”
In a subsequent meeting on January 10, 2024, the developers told Owens they were interested in obtaining the downtown development project for themselves and wanted to secure long-term support from the city council. Owens once again emphasized his ability to guide the project by swaying other officials. But he also warned the developers not to pay too much money upfront.
“I don’t know if you have been around addicts before, right? You can give them a little blow, a little blunt, a little drink,” Owens said to the developers. “But if you give them a case of whiskey, and you give them a kilo of coke, and you give them a motherf***ing pound of weed, they will die.”
In an ensuing meeting at Owens’ downtown business, Councilman Banks joined the DA, Smith, and the developers. Here, Owens informed the developers that they would need to pay Banks “25 now and 25 later” in exchange for his vote. When one of the undercover agents asked Banks what he would need to support the project, Banks replied that “fifty grand as soon as possible would help.”
Owens then moved to add another high-powered Jackson official to the scheme: Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba. In February of this year, Owens introduced the developers and Lumumba. During the introduction, Owens said he had conducted background checks on the pair and said, “They’re not FBI by the way.”
In later meetings at his business, Owens explained to the developers that he already had the support of the “leadership” in Lumumba and Banks, making the next move to securing the “pawns.” Later in the same conversation, Owens detailed how he would “clean” the money, pointing to funneling money through campaign accounts as political contributions from multiple businesses.
“I don’t give a s*** where the money comes from. It can come from blood diamonds in Africa, I don’t give a f***ing s***. I’m a whole DA. F*** that s**,” Owens said. “My job, as I understand it, with a little paperwork, is to get this deal done, and get it done most effectively.
“We can take that dope boy money. I don’t give a s***. But I need to clean it and spread it. I can do it in here. That’s why we have businesses. To clean the money, right? I don’t give a s***. You give us cash, we deposit it and give it back that way. That’s easy.”
The developers gave Owens $60,000 in additional funds the next day, with $25,000 earmarked for Owens, $25,000 for Banks, and $10,000 for former Ward 2 city councilwoman Angelique Lee. Money exchanged hands in the presence of the undercover agents, with Owens asking Banks if he was comfortable walking around with cash because it wasn’t a check “like we normally do.”
At another point in the same meeting, Owens emphasized the need to get Lumumba more involved in the scheme because he could “do damage” to the developers. He also wanted to make sure they tread carefully to “clean” payments to councilmembers and the mayor to avoid attention from law enforcement.
“That’s the only way I want the paper trail to look,” Owens said. “Because here’s the thing, at the end of the f***ing day, my most important job is to keep everybody out of jail or prison, because I’m not f***ing going.”
Later that evening, another trip to South Florida that would include Lumumba was planned. In this meeting, Owens laid out his plan to spread out political contribution checks to the mayor to avoid suspicion, noting that the developers would need to give up to $100,000 in campaign contribution checks. He explained that if it came in cash, then “everybody goes to jail because we gave over five thousand cash.”
Owens then claimed to stash illicit money at his office instead of his home, where money could not be directly linked to him.
“The regular people who vote for me, who give me $10 or $1000, they can’t count that much money,” Owens stated. “But guess what, in my safe at my DA office I got a million dollars in cash. Guess what, your f***ing ten grand don’t matter, your fifteen grand it don’t matter. I got a million dollars there. But guess what at my house it matters.”
In March, one of the agents and Owens discussed the fact that the request for qualifications (RFQ) deadline had been extended to allow for additional submissions for the downtown development project. A plan to provide bribe payments to Lumumba so that the deadline could be moved was laid out in the meeting, to be done via a phony fundraiser in Florida.
After that meeting, Owens texted Lumumba the following:
Two things to chat about: when you have a moment. They came into town to submit their proposal but learned the deadline had been adjusted another 45 days presumably because no one else applied.
Need to understand how to donate to your reelection campaign in a size able way that is most appropriate. Don’t know if you have a PAC or when you are planning to or if we can through [sic] you a private fundraiser.
When Lumumba subsequently expressed interest in the trip, Owens said they could either have “ten guys with ten checks” for the mayor or Owens give Lumumba ten checks in a single envelope. “What we used to do, if people wanted to stay under the radar, you just give a bunch of different checks from a bunch of different companies,” Owens said to the developer.
In March, a dinner meeting occurred in which former councilwoman Lee received a bag containing $3,000 cash from one of the developers, along with an offer for a shopping spree on the other developer’s credit card. The next day, Lee spent more than $6,000 on luxury goods using the card.
Ahead of the Florida trip, the developers delivered $50,000 in cash to Owens at the Hinds County District Attorney’s Office, which was converted into five $10,000 campaign contribution checks from Smith, Owens, “Company B,” and two other associates of Owens. Owens reimbursed Smith and the two associates in full.
Owens, Lumumba, and Smith traveled to Florida with the developers in early April on a private jet paid for by the FBI. Later, a group meeting on a yacht was audio and video recorded by the agents. The following exchange was captured:
Owens: We want to be very mindful of out-of-state money.
Lumumba: Yeah.
Owens: So, what this team did was give us the money, being me, and we just filtered it through several accounts in a way we comfortable doing.
Lumumba: Yeah.
Owens: So we did five $10,000 checks to make it very simple, and then when we get past the process, to our second phase, maybe in Jackson, maybe somewhere else… we’ll do something similar.
Lumumba: Yeah.
During that meeting, Lumumba called a city employee in which he directed them to move the RFQ submission deadline up to avoid additional submissions. Developer 2 later handed Lumumba five $10,000 checks in an envelope. After the exchange, Owens said, “These checks are Mississippi checks but they’re from this group.” To which Lumumba replied, “Okay.”
The developers also verbally agreed to give Lumumba another $50,000 in the future. Later the same day, Owens accepted another $50,000 in cash. Video footage shows Owens removing the cash and placing it in his pockets.
A string of other payments were made during the scheme, including the developers giving Lumumba cash to be used at a club, additional campaign checks, and a slew of deposits made by Owens, which were identified by serial number as cash given by the undercover agents.
In May, the FBI executed a raid of Owen’s office, where a small lockbox was found to be hiding cash. The lockbox was made to appear like a copy of The Constitution of the United States of America.
Around $20,000 in cash was found in the Constitution lockbox, nearly half of which was confirmed to be cash paid by the developers to Owens.
According to recently unsealed court records, Lumumba, Owens, and Banks are each indicted on multiple charges in the case:
- Owens faces one count of conspiracy, five counts of federal bribery, one count of racketeering, one count of wire fraud, one count of money laundering, and one count of false statements.
- Lumumba faces one count of conspiracy, two counts of federal bribery, one count of racketeering, one count of wire fraud, and one count of money laundering.
- Banks faces one count of conspiracy and two counts of federal bribery.
Trial is set for Jan. 6, 2025. The full indictment can be viewed below.
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