The Mayor of New Orleans charged to try to hide a relationship with his bodyguard

End of an agitated mandate for the mayor of New Orleans. A little less than five months since its departure from the City Council, Latoya Cantrell was accused this Friday, August 15 for conspiracy, fraud and obstruction, informs US media, including Associated Press. He is accused of having orchestrated an entire ploy between 2021 and 2024 to hide a relationship with his bodyguards, Jeffrey Vappie.

Cantrell and Vappie claim to have had a professional relationship when the accusation evokes a “personal and intimate” relationship.

Jeffrey Vappie, already processed by electronic fraud and false statements, and Latoya Cantrell is remarkably accused of exchanging messages on WhatsApp before eliminating them. In total, they would have gone through the application to send more than 15,000 messages, in particular to harass a citizen, eliminate evidence, make false statements to FBI agents and “perjure to a federal large jury,” said interim federal prosecutor Michael Simpson.

Taxpayers trips

In one of these exchanges about WhatsApp, Jeffrey Vappie wrote that he accompanied Latoya Cantrell in Scotland in October 2021, “where it all started,” according to the bodyguard. According to Michael Simpson, the mayor of New Orleans organized that Jeffrey Vappie joined her as part of 14 trips. Many trips organized at the expense of taxpayers in the city, for a total of $ 70,000 (around 60,000 euros).

In September 2022, the mayor and his bodyguard would have found in Martha’s Vineyard, an elegant coastal complex in the northeast of the United States. Latoya Cantrell should have been in Miami to attend a conference.

The federal prosecutor also accuses the mayor of having lied under oath when she explained that she had activated a function automatically eliminating the messages in 2021. Actually, it was not activated until December 2022, a month after the media spoke for the first time a possible relationship between Latoya Cantrell and Jeffrey Vappie.

This is not the first scandal to play the City of New Orleans in recent history. Ray Nagin, mayor from 2002 to 2010, was sentenced in 2014 to ten years in prison for corruption, money laundering, fraud and tax crimes. It benefited from probation in 2020. “Corruption for years for years,” said Michael Simpson.