A Marina Del Rey woman has agreed to plead guilty to bombshell charges that she paid homeless people on Skid Row to register to vote in a 20-year scheme tied to illegal petition signature collection.

She even let homeless people use her own address to register to vote — meaning mail-in ballots could be sent to her home, a plea agreement obtained by The California Post states.

Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, also known as “Anika,” took a plea deal for one felony count of paying another person to register to vote in a federal election, prosecutors announced Monday.

Prosecutors allege Armstrong targeted Skid Row because of its desperate large homeless population in a relatively small area who would easily accept the $2 or $3 offer she made them to sign the petition.

She worked as a petition collector for various vendors and individuals known as “coordinators,” who have not been named by prosecutors. The vendors would then pay Armstrong a set amount for each registered voters’ signature.

The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

“False registrations undermine Americans’ faith in elections – even more so when payoffs are involved,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon in a statement. “This Justice Department is committed to ensuring that all U.S. elections are fair and free from illegal meddling – so that all Americans can accept the results with confidence.”

The case centers in part on an incident that allegedly occurred on Jan. 30, 2026, when Armstrong knowingly paid another person for the purpose of getting them to register to vote in federal elections. The payment ranged from money or cigarettes, and phone cords, according to the plea agreement reviewed by the California Post.

Armstrong worked for roughly two decades as a paid petition circulator, collecting signatures for California ballot initiatives, recalls and referendums across the Los Angeles area, according to the Department of Justice.

Prior to 2025, authorities say Anika expanded the operation by also paying individuals to complete voter registration forms.

A video shot by conservative media figure James O’Keefe and reposted by an account called “Real America’s Voice” shows a woman handing cash to a homeless person.

“Now because you haven’t registered, I need to register you so I can get paid too. I’m paying you guys, I need to get paid,” the woman, who appears to be Anika, says in the video.

The video alleges the woman was caught on camera at least 28 times.

California election law allows homeless people to legally vote if they meet standard requirements, including citizenship, residency and age.

Homeless voters may register using a shelter, park, cross streets or another location where they regularly stay, even if they do not have a traditional residential address, according to the California Secretary of State.

“On several occasions, Armstrong provided a homeless individual with her own former address in Los Angeles so they had something to write on the registration form,” according to the press release.

Because California automatically mails ballots to registered voters, prosecutors said the registrations created the possibility that ballots could be sent to Armstrong’s address instead of to the homeless people who registered to vote.

Armstrong is set to appear Monday morning in United States District Court in Santa Ana for her initial hearing and is expected to formally plead guilty in the weeks ahead.

“She would sometimes find that the signatures would be disqualified, because the people signing these signature petitions weren’t actually registered to vote,” Dhillon said. “She would then gather — starting in 2025 — stacks of voter registration forms from the Los Angeles County registrar voters, and then go to Skid Row and downtown Los Angeles to have homeless people first signed a voter registration forms, and then sign the signature petitions.”

The scheme was on going for over 20 years.

“Today’s an example where fraud did occur. Not only did Ms. Brown pay people to register to vote, which is illegal, it is a federal crime,” Bill Essayli, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, said. “She also induced them to place false information on the voter registration.”

The woman said she was just “confused.”

“I didn’t think what I was doing was really bad,” Armstrong exclusively told The California Post before appearing in court on Monday.  “I’ve never been in this predicament before in my life.”

“About the voters cards… I didn’t think it was bad to do because it never got submitted to the voter register. It never got up to the voting thing, the registry,” she continued.

“I just think it’s confused right now, I really am.”

Essayli, who is a former state legislator, also took a shot at the state, noting that this could be prevented if the state shared the voter rolls with them.

“We want to get to the bottom of how widespread the fraud is. The best way for us to do that is to audit the voter roll in the state of California, which by law, we should have the ability to do,” he said. “We have been engaged in proactive litigation with the state of California, which is resisting the federal government’s right to audit the California voter rolls.”

A hearing is scheduled for tomorrow at the Ninth Circuit, where the government will sue California for not sharing its voter rolls.

The investigation was led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

The primary election is scheduled for June 2, with mail-in ballot voting already underway, and the general election set for November.