JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Carla Wiley, the president of a bogus charity that was the centerpiece of a fraud conspiracy that led to the prosecution and conviction of U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, now has until Jan. 29 to report to federal prison.
Wiley and the congresswoman's former chief of staff, Ronnie Simmons, pleaded guilty and testified against Brown. Wiley was sentenced to 21 months in prison, followed by three years of probation -- the lightest sentence of the three involved in the scandal.
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DOCUMENT: Judge's order on Wiley's request for a delay
Tuesday, Wiley filed a motion asking that her reporting date be delayed from Jan. 8 to Feb. 8, listing three reasons:
- She’s still trying to get her business affairs in order, putting things in her adult son’s name.
- She’s still trying to settle her mother’s estate. Her mom died in September, and she is the only surviving next of kin.
- She says the Federal Bureau of Prisons still has not designated where she will be placed, and if that hasn’t happened by Jan. 8, she says will have to surrender to a Federal Detention Center, which she describes as a “high-security, spartan facility utterly inappropriate for a first-time, nonviolent offender.”
Wiley wrote that with the date so close, she has little chance to be placed in a minimum-security facility. If she has to report to the detention center, she says that once she is placed, she will have to be moved via a “circuitous shared ride of weeks or months” with other inmates, to reach her final designated facility.
In an order issued Friday morning, Judge Timothy Corrigan wrote that it appears Wiley had misunderstood the court's judgment. The judgment, issued on Dec. 4, directed her to surrender only after the Bureau of Prisons has designated a facility, on a date that would not be earlier than Jan. 8. Corrigan wrote that the Bureau of Prisons has now advised the court's Pretrial Services Office that Wiley's report date will be Jan. 29. According to the order, the bureau will designate a facility before then.
Corrigan also wrote that the court believes the Jan. 29 report date gives Wiley sufficient time to get her affairs in order, denying her request for an even later reporting date.
Although Wiley has not reported to prison yet, the Bureau of Prisons has now assigned her a federal inmate number, 66813-018.