Politicians are often willing to do anything to get access to power.
Some are willing to lie and cheat their way into office.
And a Florida Democrat’s company was caught in one awful scam that may have put her in office.
House Democrat was the CEO of a company that overbilled Florida more than $5 million
Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) is a little-known backbencher in the House who represents a safe Democrat seat in South Florida.
She won the Democrat Primary for the seat by five votes in an upset in a 2022 special election after she loaned her campaign more than $3 million.
Winning the Primary was tantamount to winning the election in such a heavily Democrat seat.
The state of Florida is suing a Miramar, Florida-based healthcare company that Cherfilus-McCormick used to be the CEO of at the time.
Trinity Health Care Services was given a contract in 2021 by the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) to sign people up for COVID-19 vaccines.
FDEM officials meant to pay $50,578.50 to Trinity Health Care Services but accidentally overpaid the invoice by $5 million.
The company never gave that money back after they were overpaid by millions.
“Trinity took advantage of the state of emergency the entire country was encountering due to the COVID-19 pandemic and knowingly processed an invoice more than 100 times its typical invoice size,” Florida’s lawsuit argues.
Inside Elections, editor Jacob Rubashkin noticed the connection between Trinity Health Care Services and Cherfilus-McCormick.
“Holy cow! Florida says it accidentally paid a healthcare company $5.7 million instead of $50k. That company’s CEO, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, then loaned herself $6.2 million to win a congressional race,” Rubashkin said.
Cherfilus-McCormick ran in the 2018 and 2020 Democrat Primaries for the same seat and overwhelmingly lost.
Her salary went from less than $100,000 into the millions around the time Trinity Health Care Services was overpaid millions and she spent millions of dollars self-funding her campaign.
Florida Democrat faces an ethics investigation
Rubashkin thought the lawsuit could explain the mystery of how Cherfilus-McCormick financed her campaign.
“I’ve been reporting on Cherfilus-McCormick’s murky financial arrangements for years,” Rubashkin wrote. “A recent Office of Congressional Ethics report confirmed much of that work.”
“This lawsuit could help explain how SCM went from reporting <$100k income to making millions,” Rubashkin continued. “The source of her sudden wealth has been one of the big mysteries in this whole saga. Here the OCE report details the drastic change from her $86,000 salary in 2020 to a $5.7 million paycheck from her healthcare company in 2021.”
The Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) is conducting a separate investigation into her for the misuse of campaign finance funds.
Cherfilus-McCormick’s salary ballooned the same year the company she was the CEO of was overpaid $5 million.
Trinity Health Care Services was overpaid and held onto the money rather than return it to the state.
Florida overpaying the bill could have given Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick the money she used to fund her campaign and get elected to the House.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this story.
