In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Tiffany Brown assured the Federal Emergency Management Agency that her tiny Atlanta company could provide 30 million self-heating meals to storm-ravaged Puerto Ricans. Now she’s on trial, accused of defrauding the agency to secure a $156 million contract.
Brown’s company, Tribute Contracting, had flubbed previous contracts with the Marine Corps and Bureau of Prisons, making it ineligible to contract with FEMA in 2017, prosecutors alleged. But Tribute and Brown passed the agency’s scrutiny as it raced to help hurricane victims that fall.
After promising to deliver 1 million self-heating meals daily for 30 days under FEMA’s contract, Brown only managed to have 50,000 nonconforming dehydrated meals transported, behind schedule, to Jacksonville, Florida, according to her indictment. She received $255,000 for the meals from FEMA, which canceled her $156 million contract 16 days after awarding it.
Carolyn Ward, a FEMA supervisor who handled the contract, testified Wednesday that she and her colleagues took Brown at her word until it became clear Tribute had no ability to meet the contract terms. Ward said Brown falsely claimed to be working with a Canadian supplier, among other things.
“They would not have even paid her for those meals,” Ward said when asked what FEMA would have done if it had known the 50,000 meals Brown delivered were not self-heating.
Days before being awarded the contract on Oct. 3, 2017, Brown told FEMA in an email that she had “received firm confirmation from my core suppliers for 30 million self-heating meals in 30 days.” The email was shown to jurors and others in court Wednesday. Her proposal, submitted Sept. 28, 2017, stated in part that Tribute could deliver 10 million meals per day with 210 trucks.
In reality, Brown had no suppliers or ability to transport product to Florida, where FEMA would send it to Puerto Rico, prosecutors alleged. She was Tribute’s only employee.
Much of Ward’s testimony Wednesday centered on emails Brown exchanged with food company representatives around the world once she had signed the FEMA contract. No one was able to satisfy Brown’s short-notice request for 30 million self-heating meals with a three-month shelf life at a cost of $2 or less per meal.
On Oct. 7, 2017, the day Brown was due to deliver her first million meals, she emailed a FEMA employee that rain and traffic were delaying trucks. She said she needed a couple more days.
Ten days later, Brown was still scrambling to find suppliers. She said in an Oct. 17, 2017 email to a Heather’s Choice representative that “we don’t have any rules” for the meals FEMA needed. That was false, Ward said.
Ward said Brown’s other falsehoods to suppliers included that FEMA didn’t want its contractors to pay any subcontractors up front. Though FEMA didn’t pay contractors until meals were delivered, it had no involvement in when or how any subcontractors were paid, Ward said.
Brown’s trial began Monday with jury selection. She has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of major disaster fraud, 17 counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering and a single count of theft of government money.
Some of the charges relate to Brown’s alleged fraud against a Georgia-based litigation funding business that lent her more than $1 million in 2019. Prosecutors alleged that Brown swindled Legal Funding Group by fabricating a $6.5 million settlement with an Ohio-based freight company she falsely blamed for the cancellation of her FEMA contract.
Prosecutors said Brown owed more than $13,000 to the freight company, Total Quality Logistics, which successfully sued her after she failed to pay for the transport of meals to Florida. Brown then filed a meritless lawsuit against TQL seeking $50 million and forged the signature of its CEO on a phony settlement she sent to Legal Funding Group, according to her indictment.
Brown, who has an Atlanta clothing store, was indicted and arrested by federal authorities in September 2022 on 29 fraud, theft and money laundering charges. She pleaded not guilty and was granted bond the following month. In November 2024, she was reindicted on 32 charges and pleaded not guilty.
In 2018, when members of Congress questioned FEMA’s contract with Tribute, Brown told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the contract fell apart because FEMA failed to pay her within 48 hours.
“All I am is somebody that wrote a really good proposal about a contract, wanting to help the people of Puerto Rico,” she said at the time.
Prosecutors alleged that much of Brown’s proposal was plagiarized from various sources, including an academic article and other company websites.
On Wednesday, Ward testified that Brown initially sought to fulfill FEMA’s need for 160 million meals and scaled down her proposal to 30 million meals after being told the agency did not provide financing to vendors.
Tribute was formed in 2013 and administratively dissolved in September 2024, records with the Georgia secretary of state’s office show.
It’s unclear how long the trial, in Atlanta’s federal trial court, is expected to last.
About the Author
