Editor's note: This is the first part of a multipart series about the road that led Tiawana Brown from a federal prison sentence to the top of Charlotte's elected leadership, and that could lead her back to prison if she is convicted of COVID-era relief fraud charges.
At the Dec. 3, 2023, swearing-in ceremony for the Charlotte City Council, the new member representing District 3 gave an impassioned speech.
“Tonight is historic for me. As you may know, I’m a formerly incarcerated individual,” said Tiawana Brown. She had won her first election a month prior. “And for a long time we were called convicts, felons, inmates.”
Brown then asked everyone in the chamber to raise their hands if they knew someone who had been incarcerated.
“I am here because I am a gift from God. And this position is a gift from God that I don’t take lightly,” Brown said.
Those words, in a way, help sum up Brown and how she presents herself: Unashamed of her past. A transformational figure after serving time in federal prison in the 1990s for fraud. And now — facing 20 years in prison — a defiant one.
Her political future hangs in the balance. Candidate filing for this fall’s municipal elections opened Monday. Brown has said she plans to run for reelection for District 3, which covers west and southwest Charlotte, including where she grew up. She's already drawn two primary challengers in what's sure to be one of the most closely watched municipal elections.
Soon after that 2023 swearing-in speech, federal prosecutors began investigating Brown and her two adult daughters for COVID-era fraud. They say the trio fraudulently secured $124,000 in loans in 2021. The money was supposed to be used to help businesses struggling during the pandemic. Instead, prosecutors say the three spent the funds on personal expenses, including luxury goods like Louis Vuitton merchandise.
Brown also allegedly spent $15,000 of that money on an elaborate birthday party for herself at the Harvey Gantt Center uptown, which included a horse-drawn carriage and a rented throne.
A video from the evening shows an emcee urging the crowd to welcome Brown, saying “All hail the Queen!”
Fake forms, false statements
Russ Ferguson, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, said the scheme by Brown and her daughters was simple.
“(Brown) attached IRS forms that weren’t real and not actually submitted to the IRS, and made false statements on her application and got taxpayer money in return,” he said during an appearance on WFAE's Charlotte Talks.
On May 22, 2025, one day after being indicted, Brown held a hastily called news conference. She sat at the end of a table with her attorney, Rob Heroy, and one of her supporters, activist Cedric Dean.
She came out swinging. Brown said she had paid back the portion of the loan she was responsible for — nearly $21,000.
“So if it’s about justice, and I paid it back, why are we here?" Brown asked. "Why are we here?”
WFAE wanted to know how Brown came so far — from public housing to helping incarcerated women through her nonprofit Beauty After the Bars, and sparring with Charlotte’s mayor as an outspoken member of the City Council — only to be on the cusp of losing a hard-won redemption story.
She declined an interview. But WFAE has pieced together her story through past interviews, social media posts, court records and newspaper articles.
Brown is 54. She grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Southside Homes, a massive low-income development of two-story cottages off South Tryon and Remount roads. Southside is the largest publicly-owned housing development left in the city.
She was raised by a single mother, Artie Brown, and lived with her younger sister.
“I have always called Southside my home,” she said in a video she made for the Charlotte Housing Authority years later, walking around the low-slung buildings and pausing in front of her door. “And so when I come through here and I see people that are residents — when I see my family — it’s a lot of love.”
She added: “The west side truly is the best side. They pushed me to run for City Council and I told them, ‘I don’t think I can do politics.’”
Activist Robert Dawkins said Brown’s background from public housing makes her a unique politician. He remembers working with her recently to help residents of the Tanglewood Apartments in north Charlotte, who were being displaced. The apartments are located just miles away from where Brown grew up.
“She knew at least 10 people living there because they were born in Southside Homes and faced the life of constant displacement, moving around,” Dawkins said. “So, that part right there is refreshing.”
Legal troubles mount
In 1989, she graduated from Myers Park High School. The school’s yearbook shows she was a member of the club Students Against Drunk Driving, as well as a service club called VOGUE.
Court records show she was charged that year with writing a worthless check in Cabarrus County for $39.
Her legal problems continued in the early 1990s through a series of mostly minor charges. More bad checks. A suspended sentence in Mecklenburg County for obtaining property under false pretenses.
Her legal problems grew far more severe in 1993, when Brown and eight others were indicted on charges related to Social Security fraud. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 33 months in prison in West Virginia.
She was a sophomore at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte when she went to prison in 1994.
“I was scared, afraid, didn’t know what to expect,” Brown said in a 2023 interview with WFAE.
Redemption after incarceration
While incarcerated, the Associated Press featured Brown in a newspaper story about a program that allows women who give birth in prison to spend time with their infants.
The accompanying photo shows a smiling Brown holding her baby daughter, Tijema. Her older daughter, Antionette, who was 2, was being raised by Tiawana Brown’s mother in Charlotte.
Brown told WFAE in a previous interview that she considered having an abortion before she started her prison sentence.
“To terminate the pregnancy, I was too far gone in the pregnancy,” she said. “And then I wanted to choose to put up her for adoption because I felt like it would have been too much on my single mother that was already raising me, my sister and my 2-year-old toddler.”
She said that time in prison with her daughter sent her on a new path.
“That time was everything to me,” she said. “To spend with that little beautiful bundle of joy, where I would count her toes and fingers every day, rub her hair, hold her up against my face, lay her on my chest and just love on her, because I knew that three months will go by in the blink of an eye.”
That new path didn't fully hold.
Brown was released early, but then violated her parole. In 1996, court records show she faced two charges in Mecklenburg County for bad checks.
She was sent back to prison. She got out in November 1998.
This time, she would stay out. Brown eventually began working for an American Airlines subsidiary, and in 2017 founded her nonprofit, Beauty After the Bars, to help women like her who had spent time incarcerated. Twenty-five years after her release, she would become the first formerly incarcerated person elected to Charlotte City Council.
The story seemed complete, a full-circle turn from the courthouse to the Charlotte City Council dais. But it wasn't over: In May, Tiawana Brown, Tijema Brown and Antionette Rouse were in federal court together in uptown Charlotte. They each pleaded not guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and wire fraud.
Tiawana Brown's next scheduled court appearance is Sept. 2.
