Hustle and flow in the City with Soul

• Private planes, yacht parties, strip clubs, and boatloads of cash; the full Jackson bribery scandal has been exposed with the indictment of Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, and Jackson City Councilman Aaron Banks.

Federal prosecutors say Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens facilitated over $80,000 in bribe payments to Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba and Jackson City Council Members Aaron Banks and Angelique Lee. In exchange, Owens was paid at least $115,000. The payments came to grease the skids for a fictitious hotel development proposed by two undercover FBI operatives posing as real estate developers.

Payments to Lumumba came in the form of five $10,000 campaign contribution checks delivered to the Jackson Mayor on an FBI yacht off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida on April 2nd of this year. Lumumba was told that the checks were cut to look like they had come from donors in Mississippi, but were really from the undercover developers.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, Lumumba accepted the checks in exchange for agreeing to move up the of an RFQ to build the hotel — thereby excluding potential competitors’ proposals.

While on the yacht, Lumumba called and ordered a Jackson City employee to change the date of the RFQ. He confirmed to the FBI operatives that the date had been moved up and was promised an additional $50,000 in payments.

That evening, Lumumba and Owens were entertained by the FBI operatives at a local strip club, with $5,000 in cash being made available for Lumumba to use. He returned to Jackson after the trip and deposited each of the $10,000 in his campaign account.

Subsequently, Lumumba began drawing checks out of the campaign account made payable to him personally. On April 5th, a check in the amount of $9,500 was made payable to Lumumba from his campaign account. On April 8th, a check in the amount of $5,000 was made payable to him from the account. Both checks were cashed.

A copy of the indictment is embedded below.

Owens Says Being D.A. is Part-Time Job, Refers to Co-Mingling Bribe Money with “Dope Money”

On August 14, 2023, Owens was introduced to one of the FBI operatives, who told Owens he was interested in real estate development in Jackson. On October 9, 2023, Owens was flown on a private jet to Nashville to discuss opportunities.

The indictment indicates Owens was “ready, willing, and predisposed to engage in bribery at least as early as October 16, 2023.” Owens told the FBI operatives he had “influence in the City of Jackson” and “the ability to purchase the support of public officials.”

At his re-election victory party on November 7, 2023, Owens described his office as District Attorney as a “part-time job.” “The full job is developing…This is the part time job, to get leverage for the full-time job. This is the part time job to get the conversations and the access. Access equals the other sh-t we’re trying to do.”

The next day, the FBI operatives met with Owens and his cousin and business associate Sherik Marve’ Smith. The pair negotiated $250,000 in payments for their role in assisting the operatives — $100,000 for both Owens and Smith and $50,000 for someone identified only as “Witness 1” in the indictment.

On December 13, 2023, Owens, Smith and Witness 1 traveled via private jet paid for by the FBI for a meeting with the FBI operatives. That evening, on the private FBI yacht, Owens asked to receive his payment in cash and presented a bag he had brought on the trip specifically for that purpose. Owens was given $125,000 in marked bills to be split between him, Smith and Witness 1.

After receiving the money, he bragged about his influence. “I’m not trying to overemphasize this, you guys, but my ability to prosecute people…there’s only one me. So right now, every police agency comes to us. Everybody needs something. Every file comes to us. Everybody needs something fixed.”

On January 10, 2024, Owens informed the FBI operatives of the Downtown Development RFQ. The FBI operatives said they would like to submit a proposal and Owens offered to help them win the RFQ by purchasing the support of City Council members.

Owens cautioned the FBI agents against giving City Council members too much money too fast, saying “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. But if you give them a case of whiskey, and you give them a kilo of coke, and you give them a motherf–king pound of weed. They will die.”

At a dinner with Banks and the FBI operatives the following day, Owens and Banks schemed to get him $50,000 in payment, “25 now and 25 later.” Owens then asked Banks to leave and in his absence told the operatives:

“We never give them the asking price. I buy p–sy, I buy cars, I buy cows, I buy drugs, whatever. My point is, like [Banks] need 50, you get 30. He gets installments.”

On February 12, 2024, Owens arranged a dinner with Lumumba and the FBI. Owens told Lumumba, “I’ve done background checks. They’re not FBI by the way.”

After dinner, the FBI operatives told Owens they were worried they did not have enough votes to win the RFQ. Owens told them he could deliver three more votes and promised with Lumumba and Banks it would be easy to get “the pawns.”

Owens told the operatives to “clean” the bribery payments he would make, he would deposit all the money into the bank account of a Mississippi company and then make payments in the form of campaign contributions. Owens explained he did not care where the money came from:

“I don’t give a sh-t where the money comes from. It can come from blood diamonds in Africa, I don’t give a f–king sh-t. I’m a whole DA. F–k that shit. 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 dope boy money, I don’t give a sh-t. 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 sh-t. You give us cash, we deposit it and give it back that way. That’s easy.”

In the weeks that followed, Owens facilitated payments to Banks and Lee. He also made a request for between $50,000 and $100,000 to pay Lumumba. Owens cautioned the operatives that if they gave Lumumba $100,000 directly “then everybody goes to jail.” Instead, he asked that the money be given to him to be put in a safe inside the District Attorney’s Office mixed in with “dope money and drug money and more than a million dollars.”

Owens told the FBI operatives that co-mingling the bribe payments with other funds in the District Attorney’s safe could not be as easily linked to him:

“Because if someone comes in my motherf–king safe it’s a million dollars in cash, it’s a million dollars. You know what, if they come to my house, it reads like ‘DA Owens had twenty grand in cash.’ Regularly people who vote for me, who give me $10 or a $100 they can’t count that much money. But guess what, in my safe at my DA office I got a million dollars in cash, guess what, your f–king ten grand don’t matter, your fifteen grand it don’t matter, I got a million dollars there.”

Lumumba, Owens and Banks are due to appear in federal court today at 1:30 pm. This is a developing story.