by WorldTribune Staff, June 22, 2026 Non-AI Real World News
The FBI has deployed agents to Skid Row in Los Angeles to investigate allegations that the city’s homeless were being paid to vote in the June 2 primary.
Homeless people on Skid Row told independent media that they had been bribed with cash to sign multiple registration forms, forge signatures, and fill out voter information for the mayoral and gubernatorial primaries.
The California Post reported that up to 20 plainclothes agents were questioning Skid Row homeless, asking them if they were paid to vote or were aware of others who were approached with the offer.
Video circulating online after Election Day showed Skid Row residents claiming they were paid to vote for incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and Councilwoman Nithya Raman.
One of the videos showed a man on Skid Row who claimed he received $4 to vote for Bass.
Asked whether he would also have been paid to vote for Raman, he answered “yes” and said that Independent candidate Spencer Pratt was not among the candidates he was encouraged to support.
“They gave you an optional choice,” Kevin Shepherd said, alleging he was offered $2 but negotiated for a higher payment.
The Post reported that a homeless services drop-in center in Venice had 185 registered voters tied to its address. The organization received a $600,000 taxpayer-funded grant awarded by Raman while she chaired the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee.
The Department of Justice would only confirm that federal agents were investigating a ”criminal matter.”
The Trump Administration earlier this month said it is cutting off funding to the Los Angeles agency responsible for coordinating billions in homelessness spending after accusing it of “obvious fraud,” “wanton mismanagement” and repeated failures to safeguard taxpayer dollars.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), part of the White House fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance, is immediately suspending the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s (LAHSA) federal funding while HUD’s inspector general investigates potential offenses by the agency and its leadership, according to a letter sent to LAHSA’s board Chair Wendy Greuel and CEO Gita O’Neill, which was obtained and reviewed by Fox News Digital.
The letter detailed conflicts of interest, financial mismanagement, fraud, lack of oversight and more from the homelessness agency, which has faced efforts by the city and county to take it over.
“Suspending LAHSA’s participation in federal government programs is a necessary step in accomplishing that critical mission in Los Angeles,” HUD wrote in the letter. “LAHSA’s failures have been so severe and pervasive that Los Angeles County has withdrawn its funding for the agency, and the City of Los Angeles is considering doing so as well.”
LAHSA’s former top executive, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, resigned last year after she was found to have been a party to directing $2.1 million in federal funds under LAHSA’s control to her husband’s Santa Monica-based nonprofit employer.
