New York Attorney General Letitia James is housing a fugitive relative with a lengthy criminal record at her Virginia home, the same property at the center of her federal mortgage fraud indictment.
According to The New York Post, James’ grandniece, Nakia Thompson, 36, has been living rent-free in the controversial Norfolk house since 2020 with her three children. Thompson is wanted in North Carolina for absconding from probation and has been arrested twice for assaulting police officers, court documents show.
Thompson is listed as an “absconder for willfully avoiding supervision by her probation officer,” a spokesperson from the North Carolina Department of Corrections said.
“She was sentenced to probation for misdemeanor convictions for assault and battery and trespassing. Due to the level of the offenses, the district attorney has designated this case non-extraditable. She faces arrest if located in North Carolina, and possible activation by the court of the suspended sentence.”
Thompson’s alleged fugitive status stems from a 2011 arrest in Winston-Salem, where she was charged with malicious conduct by a prisoner, along with assault of a government official and resisting a public officer. She later pled down to assault of a government official and resisting a public officer, and received a 60-day jail sentence.
The report says Thompson has racked up additional charges in Virginia since moving there. In 2020, the same year she moved into James’ home, Thompson pled guilty to petit and grand larceny charges, both felonies. She was given two years probation and ordered to pay $2,020 in fees. She also had a handful of misdemeanor charges dropped, along with a felony burglary tools possession charge.
Additionally, Thompson has also accumulated nine separate vehicle offenses. In July, she was hit with four citations in a single day, including driving 80 mph in a 55 zone and stopping her vehicle improperly on a highway.
Federal prosecutors indicted James last week on one count of bank fraud and one count of making false claims to a financial institution. The charges are based on James’ mortgage application for the Norfolk property, which she bought in August 2020 for $137,000. The three-bedroom, one-bathroom home is now worth an estimated $235,000.
James signed a “second home rider” on the mortgage document that explicitly required her to “occupy and use” the property as a second home and maintain “exclusive control” over its occupancy. The document forbids any “shared ownership arrangement” requiring her to rent the property out or “give a management firm or any other person or entity any control over the occupancy or use of the Property.” By signing these terms, authorities say James obtained a favorable 3% interest rate on her $109,600 loan, netting her nearly $19,000.
US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan alleged in the indictment that James has had paying tenants in the house. However, Thompson told a federal grand jury in Virginia that she had been living at the house with her kids and was not paying rent, according to The New York Times.
James faces up to 60 years in prison if convicted on both counts.
James has denied all wrongdoing. Her lawyer called the charges “tremendous breaches of the public’s trust.” At a rally with socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, James painted herself as a political victim of President Donald Trump’s administration.
“We see powerful voices trying to silence truth and punish dissent and weaponize justice for political gain,” she said.