Democrat Staffer Who Posed as FBI Agent and Stole Public Funds

A congressional staffer for an Illinois Democrat impersonated an FBI agent at a MAGA protest rally in DC in 2020, fled from cops, and committed financial crimes; yet he never made headlines and is still out of jail.

Daily Mail on Thursday published an account of how 25-year-old Sterling Devion Carter, staffer for Democrat congressman Brad Schneider of IL, impersonated as an FBI agent at a Washington DC protest rally on November 14, 2020. To pose as FBI, Carter bought clothes and gear online, customized his vehicle to appear as a police car, and carried a gun illegally at the post-election protest rally held by conservatives in DC. His shirt read Federal Agent. But it was his car that drew suspicion from real cops.

Two cops at the rally got suspicious of Carter as they noticed the wrong font used on the license plate of his “police car” and the unusual way in which he carried some extra gun magazines near his gun holster. The story wrote:

The officers were not aware of any FBI agents helping manage the protests, and noticed Carter would move away from them whenever they got close. 

To obscure his real identity, carter was wearing a face mask and a baseball cap. When he was approached by cops and asked to show his credentials, Carter took off in his fake police car. The story says the cops chased him on their bikes but ultimately abandoned the pursuit for “officer safety reasons.”

Carter was finally tracked and arrested in his home state of Georgia in early 2021. According to The Daily Beast, Carter spent 81 days in jails across Georgia, Oklahoma and the District of Columbia. When Congressman Schneider’s office was informed of Carter’s crimes, they asked him to resign or be fired. He chose resignation while keeping his government-issued cell phone. According to the story, Schneider’s office discovered that the staffer had been stealing money over the months using fake signatures, and his theft amounted to $80 thousand.

Despite all his crimes caught with solid evidence, Carter was not criminally charged with theft of public funds until February 2022 and it was only last week that U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols sentenced him to 9 months in federal prison for theft of public funds. He is still out of prison and supposedly has promised to turn himself in soon, according to his attorney.

Many questions remain about Carter’s escape, motives behind posing as FBI and presence at the MAGA rally in DC and escape from cops. His crimes were protected from making news and it’s not clear whether the media was all in on it or simply did not know about Carter’s journey of crimes.

Both federal law enforcement and Congressman Schneider’s office kept perfect secrecy surrounding Carter’s crimes. After more than 18 months of his initial arrest, a few media sources have published Carter’s story but the journalistic curiosity appears dead in the bigger picture—though not surprisingly.