ST. LOUIS — President Donald Trump’s new pick to be the region’s U.S. Attorney dropped a criminal case against two local developers and their accountant, one of whom is represented by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s brother.
U.S. Attorney Thomas Albus on Wednesday personally filed the motion to dismiss the fraud charges against Sid Chakraverty, his brother, Vic Alston, and their accountant, Shijing “Poppy” Cao. Albus bypassed the career federal prosecutor who brought the case last year and who just three weeks ago argued against the developers’ motion to dismiss.
Albus wrote in his filing that the minority business program Chakraverty, Alston and Cao are accused of defrauding with fake documents has been paused by St. Louis and deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Department of Justice. The brothers and their accountant led major regional developer Lux Living and landlords Asprient Properties and STL CityWide.
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The defendants have agreed to pay the city back for the tax breaks they received, Albus wrote, valued at over $1.5 million in sales tax exemptions, and a still-active property tax break worth $1.7 million over 10 years on a Pershing Avenue apartment building.
“Accordingly, it is prudent for the government to end this criminal prosecution,” Albus wrote.
It marked a sharp reversal from the position of the U.S. Attorney’s office just a few weeks ago, when Hal Goldsmith, a longtime fraud and corruption prosecutor, filed a response arguing case law was clear that such constitutional questions about government programs do not entitle people to “lie, cheat and steal.”
“Regardless of the constitutionality of the city program, defendants may be prosecuted for their fraud,” Goldsmith wrote.
Robert Patrick, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said in a statement the office had no further comment about the reversal.
Albus’ motion came a month after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s brother, Washington D.C. lawyer Brad Bondi, entered an appearance in the case on behalf of Chakraverty and filed motions arguing the charges should be dropped because the city’s minority hiring program was unconstitutional.
A spokesman for Chakraverty and Alston said they’d been working with Brad Bondi since last fall, “well before the election,” and his firm for even longer. The developers were indicted in September.
The dismissal comes roughly three weeks after Albus was appointed by Pam Bondi to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Missouri. Alston also recently hired Jeff Jensen, Albus and Goldsmith’s former boss when he was the U.S. Attorney for St. Louis during President Donald Trump’s first term.
Albus
Brad Bondi has represented Trump Media & Technology Group and Trevor Milton, who was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors in Nikola, the bankrupt electric truck maker he founded and led.
Brad Bondi did not respond to a request for comment.
Kathleen Clark, a professor of legal ethics at Washington University, said Albus’ move is part of a pattern.
“What we see here is a road map for getting what you want out of this corrupt Trump administration — hiring relatives of Trump administration officials to plead your case,” Clark said.
She also noted that Albus himself had to make the motion to dismiss, similar to how DOJ political appointees overrode career prosecutors in New York to dismiss the case against that city’s mayor, Eric Adams, allegedly in exchange for helping the administration make deportations.
“No civil servant signed this, and that fits a pattern,” Clark said. “It raises the question: Why wouldn’t a career lawyer, a career prosecutor, put his name on it?”
Years of controversy
Brad Bondi and other defense lawyers had filed last month to dismiss the charges against the brothers and their accountant.
Before they were indicted, the developers faced years of controversy over their management practices and treatment of tenants. Then, in September 2024, a federal grand jury indicted them for falsifying records showing they complied with city rules requiring a certain amount of contracting and subcontracting work to go to minority- and women-owned firms in exchange for tax breaks.
Instead, the indictment said, they issued one set of checks to the contractor that actually did the work, and a sham check would be made out to a minority- or women-owned firm they claimed completed it.
In a Wednesday statement on behalf of Chakraverty and Alston from Jim McCarthy, a Washington-based public relations consultant, the developers thanked their lawyers Brad Bondi and Renato Mariotti, both of global law firm Paul Hastings.
“Sid and Vic also want to extend heartfelt thanks to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of St. Louis, Thomas Albus, for his professionalism and sensible action in resolving this matter so swiftly after taking office,” the developers’ statement said. “Even during the most difficult days of this process, Sid and Vic have continued with their hard-working vocation to build first-rate, affordable residential apartment buildings for the communities where they have lived and worked for years. That’s the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that we can all celebrate in the United States, the greatest country in the world.”
But the duo have faced years of complaints from tenants who say their construction is subpar and management unresponsive. They settled a class-action lawsuit over withholding security deposits. Downtown loft dwellers claimed they drove once-posh buildings into disrepair after taking over their condominium boards and didn’t pay contractors for basic systems like fire protection.
The fraud charges against them involved a minority hiring program of the like the Trump administration has taken aim at. On his first day in office, Trump ordered the dismantling of federal racial diversity efforts. His administration gutted offices focused on minority health and business promotion and put research grants linked to diversity on the chopping block.
Meanwhile, St. Louis officials, worried about securing federal disaster aid to rebuild after May’s tornado, announced earlier this month it would rewrite its city minority- and women-owned contractor rules after the Trump administration threatened grant cuts and prosecutions in cities with such programs.
The St. Louis NAACP chapter issued a statement Wednesday saying the DOJ’s move sends a “dangerous message” that “there will be no meaningful consequences for those who game the very systems designed to promote fairness and opportunity.”
Jensen, the former U.S. Attorney recently hired by developer Alston, said he was “sure” Attorney General Bondi did not intercede in the case on behalf of her brother’s client. Dismissing the charges was the right move, he said.
“It would be inconsistent to argue around the country that race-based government contracting is unconstitutional while simultaneously prosecuting people for allegedly violating the same types of contracts,” Jensen said. “Hal (Goldsmith) is an aggressive prosecutor who indicted the case when DOJ’s position was that such racial preferences were constitutional, but things have changed.”
But Elkin Kistner, a local attorney who has represented tenants and condo owners who have sued Alston and Chakraverty over their business practices, said the move to drop the federal charges “appears contrary to the rule of law.”
“And the court doesn’t have to grant the motion,” Kistner said.
But by late Thursday, without fanfare, or a hearing, U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey already had.
