PHILADELPHIA — A Florida-based political consultant who once worked as the campaign treasurer for Philadelphia congressional candidate Chris Rabb was charged Friday with wire fraud after she defrauded more than 20 clients out of about $1 million, according to federal prosecutors.

Yolanda Brown was charged in federal court in Philadelphia with one count of wire fraud, according to documents unsealed Friday. She was charged by information, which typically indicates a person intends to plead guilty.

She did not have an attorney listed in court records, and attempts to reach a lawyer who previously represented her were not immediately successful.

Brown had been under scrutiny for months over allegations from campaigns in several states that she had mismanaged, embezzled, or taken unauthorized withdrawals from accounts meant to support political candidates.

And Rabb accused her earlier this year of making unauthorized withdrawals from his campaign accounts, saying he had fired her and reported the allegations to federal authorities.

While Brown worked on Rabb’s campaign in 2025 and early 2026 — identified in court documents only as “Political Campaign #1″ — prosecutors said she set up new bank accounts on which she could serve as a signatory. She then transferred $19,000 into one of those accounts, they said, and went on to steer about $6,000 into her personal bank account without Rabb’s knowledge.

In April, Rabb’s campaign said it identified about $160,000 that had been routed into the account Brown had set up. But it was not clear Friday how much of that may have been embezzled for Brown’s personal use, and it is also not uncommon for prosecutors to formally charge a more limited scope of wrongdoing if a defendant has agreed to plead guilty.

Still, in charging documents, prosecutors said Brown, who ran Brown Financial & Consulting Services Group and worked primarily with Democrats, committed her fraud against Rabb actions as part an “overall scheme” in which she defrauded about 20 clients out of more than $1 million. Prosecutors did not name the other victims, or offer details on how the other cases unfolded.

Brown has been accused of other wrongdoing in recent years.

Earlier this year, Ken Welch, the mayor of St. Petersburg, Fla., said Brown embezzled more than $200,000 from his campaign committee. Another Florida-based political consultant also accused Brown of wiring $25,000 out of PAC’s bank account.

And in 2024, Brown — who also used different surnames, including her married name, Yolanda Rumph — pleaded no contest to felony embezzlement in California, where prosecutors said she stole from two different companies, including a nonprofit. She was ordered to pay $330,000 in restitution but served no jail time.

An attorney for Brown, Khambrel Davis, told The Inquirer earlier this year that one of Brown’s employees — not Brown — had actually committed the most recent fraud in Philadelphia and Florida.

But the employee had since disappeared, Davis said, and “everyone’s just assuming [Brown] must have done this. They’re kind of putting together this narrative that she’s just this habitual thief.”

Rabb — a longtime state representative who won a competitive Democratic primary this spring in the state’s 3rd Congressional District — declined to comment.

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