Two men were arrested and charged in Southern California on voter fraud charges after they allegedly submitted thousands of fraudulent voter registration applications on behalf of homeless people, said the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office on Tuesday.
The office said Montenegro allegedly submitted more than “8,000 fraudulent voter registration applications between July and October 2020.” He’s also accused of falsifying names, signatures, and addresses on nomination papers “under penalty of perjury to run for mayor in the city of Hawthorne.”
Montenegro also faces another 10 counts of voter fraud, seven counts of procuring and offering a false or forged instrument, two counts of perjury, and five misdemeanor counts of interference with a prompt transfer of a completed affidavit, the office said.
If convicted, Montenegro can face as many as 15 years and eight months in prison, while Arevalo could face seven years in prison, officials noted.
The FBI, District Attorney’s office, the Los Angeles Public Integrity Division, and other agencies are investigating the case.
Other details about the case are not clear. It’s also not clear if their alleged voter fraud scheme affected the presidential election in some way.
It’s not clear if either Montenegro or Arevalo have lawyers.
Over the past two weeks, since the Nov. 3 election, President Donald Trump’s campaign and other Republicans have raised questions about voter fraud and irregularities that may have tipped the presidential race to Democratic candidate Joe Biden. The president’s team has filed several lawsuits in key states including Pennsylvania, Georgia, and other places, while citing sworn statements made by hundreds of witnesses.
The Department of Homeland Security’s cyber-security division, in a statement last week, said the past election was the “most secure” in history. Meanwhile, secretaries of state have disputed Trump’s claims of fraud.
