Democratic Florida Rep. and Florida Gators superfan Corrine Brown was indicted along with her chief of staff on Friday on 24 federal charges, according to reports from Florida media.
Brown and her associate Elias Simmons, who goes by the nickname "Ronnie," were charged with "conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, multiple counts of mail and wire fraud, concealing material facts on required financial disclosure forms, theft of government property, obstruction of the due administration of the internal revenue laws, and filing false tax returns," News4Jax reports.
Brown and Simmons were accused of soliciting $800,000 in donations for charity and using the money as what one official called a "personal slush fund."
Brown made headlines in 2009 when she delivered a speech in the House praising the 2008 National Championship University of Florida college football team while wearing an orange Gators robe.
In her speech, Brown said that she wished to "gratulate" the boys in orange and blue and praised the university as "the academic school in the country." She also referred to then-Coach Urban Meyer as "Irvin Meyers" and expressed distaste for the idea of a college football playoff system, adding that "everything is just not all equal." "It is clear," Brown said, "that the Gators are superb to any other schools with the conference that we play in."
"One, two, three, four, five. Then the Gators don't take no jive," Brown added before yielding back the balance of her time.
The 2008 National Championship Gators team lost only once, to the Ole Miss Rebels.
Brown came to the attention of the Federal Election Commission in 1998 when her campaign treasurer's name was found to be forged on multiple required reports. The same year, her daughter, Shantel, accepted a luxury car as a gift from Foutanga Sissoko, a Gambian millionaire whose release from a Miami prison Brown had worked to secure.
In 2004, Brown called the Bush administration's Haiti policy "racist" and Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega and his staff "a bunch of white men." When Noriega pointed out that he is Hispanic, Brown responded, "you all look alike to me."
When asked by reporters about federal probes in March, Brown said, "I'm clean."
Brown will appear at a Florida courthouse to hear charges formally during a hearing scheduled for Friday at 1:00 p.m.