Political operative McCrae Dowless accused of Social Security fraud in new indictment
READ MORE
Improvement Association Podcast
“The Improvement Association” is a podcast from the makers of the popular “Serial” podcast and The New York Times. Here are stories that go behind the story told in the podcast.
Expand All
McCrae Dowless, the Bladen County political operative at the center of the allegations of absentee-ballot fraud that brought down Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris in 2018, has been indicted on new charges.
A federal grand jury accused Dowless of collecting thousands of dollars in Social Security disability payments in 2017 and 2018 even though he was working for multiple political campaigns including Harris’ bid for the 9th Congressional District, according to a newly unsealed federal indictment.
Social Security disability payments are typically available only to people who can’t work because of a disability. And Dowless, the indictment said, told the government that “he remained disabled and did not receive income beyond his SSI benefits” even though in fact he was working.
He was charged with one count of taking “money belonging to the United States exceeding the sum of $1,000, to which he knew he was not entitled,” as well as with two counts of defrauding the Social Security Administration and one count of making false statements.
Charlotte TV station WSOC first reported on the charges Tuesday. The charges were filed earlier this month but weren’t unsealed until Monday.
Dowless received Social Security disability payments, as well as regular Social Security payments, even as he failed to report more than $130,000 in income from political campaigns he was working for, the indictment states.
Ultimately, he’s accused of taking at least $14,000 in unauthorized payments.
The indictment says Dowless “knew he was not entitled” to the disability payments since he was able to work. And the government only paid him those benefits “because it was not aware of Dowless’ ongoing work activity,” the indictment states.
A lawyer for Dowless, Cynthia Singletary of Elizabethtown, did not respond to a message left at her law firm Tuesday afternoon.
Dowless has previously been charged with numerous federal crimes related to a ballot-harvesting scheme he’s accused of running in both 2016 and 2018 for Republican candidates for the 9th Congressional District, which stretches along North Carolina’s southern border from Charlotte into rural southeastern North Carolina.
Through those investigations, he faces charges of felony obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice, perjury, solicitation to commit perjury and unlawful possession of an absentee ballot, The News & Observer has reported.
Most of those charges come with multiple counts, The N&O reported, based on separate instances of alleged fraud from the 2016 primary, the 2018 primary and the 2018 general election.
Several people who are accused of working with Dowless to carry out the election fraud scheme — in which he is accused of paying them to collect absentee ballots and in some cases vote in other people’s names — have also been charged.
One of them was Dowless’ former stepdaughter, Lisa Britt, who “said that they would even fill out incomplete and unsealed absentee ballots they collected, voting for Republican candidates in local races,” the N&O reported after the first round of criminal charges in February 2019.
This story was originally published April 21, 2020 at 4:36 PM with the headline "Political operative McCrae Dowless accused of Social Security fraud in new indictment."
