Top Asian Diversity Consultant Accused Of Defrauding Low-Income Housing Fund
Faith Bautista is accused by her former colleagues of filing thousands of fake applications for state funds meant for housing assistance to low-income residents.
Faith Bautista, the founder of a new Asian-focused television network and a prominent Asian American diversity activist in California, is facing a lawsuit alleging that she orchestrated a scheme to defraud a state program designed to provide housing assistance to low-income residents.
The National Asian American Coalition, the organization Bautista led until 2022, accused her of submitting fake applications to an affordable homeownership counseling program in a conspiracy to siphon the state reimbursement funds to herself and her family.
The scheme helped generate an astounding $12,356,288 in revenue, according to a complaint filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court. Before NAAC’s involvement with the housing program, the group raised less than half a million dollars a year from other program service revenue.
NAAC claims that Bautista not only paid herself and her family kickbacks but used her success generating income from the housing program, run by CalHFA, to demand a nearly $1 million bonus from her organization.
The scheme allegedly involved the submission of names plucked from a variety of sources, including a list of Filipino voters purchased by Bautista, from which she filed nearly 200 falsified applications.
Bautista and her daughter, Ariel McCarty, allegedly hosted a financial literacy event for members of the U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton in order to file more false applications. The mother-daughter team lured over 100 U.S. Marines into signing intake forms for the CalHFA counseling program, “despite providing no counseling services that would qualify under that program,” according to the lawsuit.