Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson (D) has been arrested on allegations of orchestrating a kickback scheme that funneled thousands of taxpayer dollars for her personal benefit.
Anderson, 45, faces federal charges, including five counts of wire fraud and one count of theft related to federally funded programs.
The FBI took Anderson into custody on Friday, as announced by the Department of Justice. The indictment alleges that Anderson violated Massachusetts state laws by hiring family members as paid staff and running a “bonus kickback scheme” in which she awarded inflated bonuses to a relative, who then returned a portion of the funds to her.
Massachusetts law prohibits city councilors from employing immediate family members on their staff. In or around 2022, Anderson hired two close relatives and was later required to terminate their employment.
She was fined $5,000 by the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission in the spring of 2023 for these actions.
According to the indictment, Anderson circumvented these restrictions in November 2022 by hiring a relative not classified as immediate family. She allegedly misrepresented her relationship with the relative in official communications, writing in an email to a City of Boston employee that the staffer “for