Wrestler only the second person to be charged federally in Mississippi welfare scandal

Brett DiBiase, a former skilled wrestler and son of WWE’s “Million Greenback Man,” pleaded responsible Thursday to a brand new federal cost that includes his brother, Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr., as an alleged co-conspirator.

The plea indicators that DiBiase might act as a witness within the federal authorities’s ongoing investigation into the Mississippi welfare scandal, during which officers misspent or stole tens of tens of millions of federal welfare funds below the administration of former Gov. Phil Bryant.

However Brett DiBiase, who admitted to at least one depend of conspiracy to defraud the federal government, doesn’t seem poised to testify in opposition to his brother. Teddy DiBiase and the boys’s mother and father, Ted and Melanie DiBiase, sat within the courtroom for the plea listening to Thursday. All three DiBiase males are dealing with costs in Mississippi Division of Human Providers parallel civil lawsuit, which calls for they return over $5 million in welfare funds they obtained.

“Teddy and Melanie and Ted Sr. love Brett and are right here to assist him like they all the time have and all the time will,” Teddy DiBiase’s lawyer Scott Gilbert stated on the courthouse.

Whereas Teddy DiBiase has not been formally charged, federal authorities hinted they had been zoning in on the older brother once they tried to grab his $1.5 million Madison residence in 2020. Teddy DiBiase was additionally included as an alleged co-conspirator within the invoice of knowledge that former welfare director John Davis pleaded responsible to in September.

Each Davis and Brett DiBiase pleaded responsible to a doc known as a invoice of knowledge, which happens when the defendant opts in opposition to a grand jury indictment. They’re the one individuals who have confronted federal legal costs associated to the welfare scandal.

Davis’ mixed 20 felony counts include a complete doable jail sentence of many years, however his plea settlement assures he’ll solely serve time for his two federal costs, which have most sentences of 5 and ten years. In trade, Davis can be cooperating with prosecutors.

Davis was Bryant’s direct subordinate, and he may have essentially the most data of Bryant’s position within the scandal.

“As I’ve stated earlier than, this case is way from over and each the State of Mississippi and the U.S. Authorities will proceed to pursue all these concerned on this fraud, no matter their place or standing,” Hinds County District Lawyer Jody Owens stated in an announcement after Brett DiBiase’s plea listening to.

Davis introduced the DiBiase household into the administration of the state’s welfare company and Non permanent Help for Needy Households program for a number of purported functions, corresponding to worker coaching and motivational talking, opioid abuse consciousness, youth mentoring, improvement of a cellphone app to trace teenagers, and workforce improvement. Whereas they obtained fee up entrance, lots of the applications by no means got here to fruition.

These are solely a few of the agreements — what prosecutors have known as “sham contracts” — that make up the most important public fraud case in Mississippi historical past. Others embody the $8 million value of welfare-funded tasks impressed by NFL legend Brett Favre. Within the investigative collection “The Backchannel,” Mississippi In the present day discovered via personal textual content messages that Bryant and Favre had mentioned these tasks, and that Favre even enticed the governor by providing shares in one of many firms that obtained stolen welfare funds. Favre is a civil defendant however has not been charged criminally.

READ MORE: Mississippi In the present day’s full “The Backchannel” investigation

Bryant has confronted no costs. As an alternative, the official who initially investigated the case, State Auditor Shad White, whom Bryant initially appointed to his place, describes Bryant because the whistleblower of the case.

“I’m happy that our work uncovering the most important public fraud in state historical past continues to lead to convictions,” White stated in an announcement Thursday. “We’ll proceed to help the prosecutors, who resolve who faces legal costs.”

Whereas the state initially arrested six folks in 2020 — 5 of whom pleaded responsible and one who obtained pretrial diversion — Davis and Brett DiBiase are the one ones to be charged with federal crimes associated to the welfare scandal. Nonprofit operators Nancy New and her son Zach New, whose nonprofit Mississippi Neighborhood Training Middle facilitated a lot of the theft or misspending, pleaded responsible to separate federal costs that they defrauded the Mississippi Division of Training.

Since nobody has been sentenced within the both the state or federal instances, nobody is presently serving a jail sentence.

Davis employed Brett DiBiase on the welfare company in 2017, then secured for him a six-figure job at Mississippi Neighborhood Training Middle, the place Davis was more and more outsourcing the TANF program. Federal prosecutors say DiBiase was not certified for the job. In 2018, DiBiase entered a $48,000 contract with the welfare division present opioid habit schooling, however after slipping again into his personal habit, he did not carry out the service. Davis and New then used $160,000 in federal funds to pay for Brett DiBiase’s four-month stint at a luxurious rehab facility in Malibu, Davis and New admitted of their state responsible pleas.

Throughout the Thursday plea listening to, prosecutors described how they’d show the fees in opposition to Brett DiBiase. They cited a textual content during which Brett DiBiase requested Davis what the identify of the nonprofit he labored for was.

Whereas pleading responsible, federal prosecutors allowed Brett DiBiase to “considerably agree” with the “important info” of the invoice of knowledge in opposition to him, however not the prosecutor’s narrative in its entirety. He didn’t specify which components he contested.

Brett DiBiase’s single conspiracy cost comes with a most sentence of 5 years and superb of as much as $250,000.

“I applaud our federal companions for persevering with to pursue federal costs for every particular person answerable for stealing from Mississippi’s most needy and susceptible residents,” Owens stated in his assertion.