ATLANTA – A sentencing hearing began Monday for a former Georgia state lawmaker and civil rights activist charged with fraud.
Tyrone Brooks, an Atlanta Democrat, pleaded guilty in April to one count of filing a false tax document and no contest to five counts of mail and wire fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to 24 remaining counts.
Prosecutors have asked U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg to impose a two-year prison sentence and to order Brooks to pay restitution. Brooks’ lawyers have asked for five years of probation, citing his lifetime of civil rights work.
The hearing is expected to last several days.
An indictment alleges Brooks solicited about $1 million in contributions from the mid-1990s to 2012 from individuals and corporate donors that he said would be used to fight illiteracy in underserved communities and for other causes. The contributions were made to the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, or GABEO, which he had led since 1994, and from Universal Humanities, a tax-exempt organization he founded in 1990.