Michael Goldberg, Mississippi Today

This story was originally published by Mississippi Today.

Billionaire Tommy Duff, a likely candidate for governor, and his brother James Duff are being sued by California-based attorneys on behalf of the federal government alleging the men and their companies improperly obtained over $6.7 million in federal pandemic loans.

The lawsuit, which was filed under seal in the U.S. Northern District of California in 2024, claims the brothers – the wealthiest people in Mississippi – took advantage of a program designed to help small businesses cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lawsuit will move to Mississippi after a federal judge in March granted the Duffs’ motion to transfer the case. The plaintiff in the case is Relator LLC, a limited liability corporation formed, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, by California attorneys Anoush Hakimi and Peter Shahriari.

The Duff brothers, estimated to be worth a combined $7 billion, became the wealthiest people in Mississippi by turning a small, struggling company into Southern Tire Mart, the nation’s largest truck tire dealer and retread manufacturer. They created Duff Capital Investors, the largest privately held business in Mississippi, with ownership in more than 20 companies.

The complaint references that wealth to paint a stark picture, alleging the Duffs “looted the government” by submitting “falsified loan documents” to the Small Business Administration in order to obtain taxpayer-funded payments through the Paycheck Protection Program. Congress created the program in March of 2020 to keep businesses afloat as the global economy shuddered to a halt at the outset of the pandemic.

In court filings, attorneys for Duff have sharply contested the claims, arguing the lawsuit relies on “inflammatory rhetoric” instead of facts. The Duffs’ legal team has also pointed out that the California attorneys have filed similar lawsuits against other individuals, some of which have been dismissed, and argue the lawsuit is the product of trial lawyers looking to capitalize on confusion surrounding pandemic-era government programs.

In a statement to Mississippi Today, Matthew D. Miller, an attorney for the Duffs, said he expected his clients to be “fully vindicated by the judicial process.”

“The PPP loans were lawfully obtained, fully disclosed and reviewed by banks, the SBA and federal attorneys,” Miller wrote. “This case is exactly the kind of parasitic, web-scraped lawsuit that courts have repeatedly rejected from this plaintiff. The allegations were also independently reviewed by the Department of Justice which, after this review, declined to intervene in this lawsuit.”

Thomas Duff, 69, has used his wealth from a tire empire he and his brother created to become a political power broker and philanthropist. He served an eight-year stint on the state Institutions of Higher Learning Board, first appointed by former Gov. Phil Bryant, and has been a major contributor to many Republican campaigns in Mississippi. The tire baron has said he is considering running for governor in 2027, and the lawsuit could unfold as he campaigns for the state’s highest office.

Whistleblower or ‘serial relators?’

The lawsuit, which was filed on Feb. 20, 2024, under the federal False Claims Act, alleges the Duffs and their companies falsely claimed eligibility for PPP loans during the pandemic. The suit was brought by a “relator,” a legal term for a private entity suing as a whistleblower on behalf of the government to recover funds obtained by a defendant accused of defrauding the government.

The Justice Department investigated the allegations made in the complaint and in June of 2025, federal prosecutors declined to intervene. That means federal prosecutors decided against litigating the case themselves, but allowed the private attorneys in California to prosecute the action on behalf of the United States. The case was then unsealed days later.

The Justice Department can decline to intervene for a number of reasons, including a lack of resources or insufficient evidence in the case. In a June 13 court filing, federal prosecutors asked that if either side proposes the lawsuit be dismissed, settled, or otherwise discontinued, the court provide the Justice Department with “notice and an opportunity to be heard before ruling.”

In this case, the relator is called, fittingly, “Relator LLC.” Court records and settlement agreements show the entity has filed several similar lawsuits, with mixed results. For example, it secured a multi-million dollar settlement against a dental services company, while a federal judge threw out its suit against a ritzy golf club.

According to an analysis of these sorts of cases by the law firm Crowell & Moring LLP, a group of “serial relators” including Relator LLC have relied on publicly available PPP data published by the Small Business Administration to file a deluge of lawsuits. The suits allege that borrowers have violated the False Claims Act by seeking PPP loans for which they were ineligible.

Hecht Partners, a New York-based commercial litigation firm representing Relator LLC in its lawsuit against the Duffs, did not respond to messages seeking additional comment about its client’s multiple lawsuits against those alleged to have committed PPP fraud in recent years.

Plaintiffs say the Duffs ‘simply took advantage’

More than $4 billion in PPP loans flowed to Mississippi after Congress approved the federal support program for businesses, with the goal of preventing mass layoffs amid a widespread economic shutdown. Over 79,000 businesses in the state were approved for PPP loans, with disbursements ranging from from $100 to $10 million.

The Duffs applied for loans under the program, and some of their businesses received a total of over $6.7 million, according to court records. The companies should never have received the money, Relator LLC contends, because the Duffs had access to substantial money through their multi-billion dollar conglomerate.

“They are the two richest people in the state of Mississippi,” the lawsuit reads. “They own Duff Capital Investors LLC, which is their very own well-financed investment firm with access to significant capital. There was no need for the loans, and certainly no need to get money from the U.S. government as opposed to their own corporate coffers.”

The lawsuit further alleges the Duffs’ companies were far too large to qualify for relief, calling one reported employee count “a totally fabricated figure” and describing its economic-need certification as “a massive lie.”

Southern Tire Mart, the center of the Duffs’ business portfolio, underreported its headcount, claiming to have 496 employees in order to stay below the 500 threshold to remain eligible for the relief funds, the lawsuit claims. Some estimates say Southern Tire Mart has upwards of 10,000 employees.

Relator LLC also maintains the Duffs’ businesses were financially successful during the pandemic and could have shifted capital around through their parent company or investors to shore up any losses they might have suffered during the pandemic.

After receiving the PPP loans, the Duffs “doubled down on their misappropriation by seeking loan forgiveness” for a program they were never eligible for in the first place, the lawsuit claims.

“This is a glaring example of two wealthy billionaires taking advantage of the system,” the complaint reads.

Duffs say the lawsuit is ‘groundless’

In subsequent court filings, the Duffs’ legal team rejected all the allegations made in the complaint and said their clients obtained the loans lawfully for the purpose of keeping “hard-working people employed and paid.”

In response to the allegation that the Duffs fabricated their employee headcounts, their attorneys argue the lawsuit misstates the rules for obtaining PPP loans. The companies that received loans – including Southern Tire Mart and two auto dealerships – qualified as franchisees, the attorneys say, which made them eligible for loans even if the broader Duff business network employed thousands.

“Relator LLC argues that defendants were ineligible for the loans but never mentions a statute that specifically authorized the loans to the recipients, as ‘franchisees,’” the Duffs’ attorneys write. “The complaint is full of vague and speculative claims that do not plausibly allege wrongdoing.”

The Duffs’ legal team also argues that regardless of the financial resources the brothers had, the federal government tied eligibility for the loans only to “economic uncertainty,” a condition the Southern Tire Mart clearly faced in the early days of the pandemic, they added.

Lawsuit could stretch into governor’s race

Court filings indicate both sides are gearing up for a protracted legal fight. In addition to Miller, the Duffs have retained Joseph Tartakovsky, a San Francisco-based attorney who is the former deputy solicitor general of Nevada. Tartakovsky filed paperwork on Monday seeking permission to represent the Duffs in the U.S. Southern District of Mississippi.

District Judge Kristi H. Johnson, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2020, has been assigned the case. She could dismiss the case in a matter of months, but if she declines to do that, legal proceedings could stretch well into the 2027 governor’s race.

Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson has already entered the Republican primary for governor, and former House Speaker Philip Gunn is expected to do the same next week.

Duff has stopped short of formally announcing a run for governor in 2027, but he has said publicly he is considering entering the race, pitching himself as an outsider businessman who rose to prominence with no experience holding elected office.

Editor’s note: Mississippi Today received a Paycheck Protection Program loan in 2020.

Employee sues Ole Miss chancellor after being fired over Charlie Kirk posts

by Michael Goldberg, Mississippi Today
October 22, 2025

A former University of Mississippi employee fired in September over social media commentary she reposted about the assassination of Charlie Kirk has filed a federal lawsuit against the university's chancellor, claiming he violated her First Amendment rights.

Lauren Stokes, a former executive assistant in the University of Mississippi's development office, said she was terminated over a social media post she endorsed on her private Instagram account about Kirk, the right-wing activist and CEO of the political organization Turning Point USA.

University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce fired Stokes over speech that is constitutionally protected, even if it was offensive, her attorney argued in a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court.

"A private employer might require its employees to conform to a point of view but the state acting through its public university cannot," wrote attorney Allyson Mills. "After all, today's policed are tomorrow's policemen. No state institution should purport to wield such power."

Boyce was sued in both his personal and professional capacities. University of Mississippi spokesperson Jacob Batte told Mississippi Today the university does not comment on pending litigation.

On Sept. 10, Kirk was assassinated while speaking on a college campus in Utah. That night, Stokes reposted to her Instagram account a statement made by another person that lambasted Kirk's views on issues like guns, abortion and race.

“For decades, yt (white) supremacist and reimagined Klan members like Kirk have wreaked havoc on our communities, condemning children and the populace at large to mass death for the sake of keeping their automatic guns," the statement said. "They have willingly advocated to condemn children and adult survivors of (sexual assault) to forced pregnancy and childbirth. They have smiled while stating the reasons people who can birth children shouldn't be allowed life-saving medical care when miscarrying. They have incited and clapped for the brutalizing of Black and Brown bodies. So no, I have no prayers to offer Kirk or respectable statements against violence.”

The post generated immediate backlash for Stokes, who deleted the post and apologized hours after publishing it. That same night, Boyce happened to dine at a restaurant owned by Stokes and her husband, the complaint says.

By the next morning, a social media firestorm had kicked into high gear, with conservative activists and even some state leaders drawing Stokes's post to her employer's attention. That mirrored similar episodes around the country in the days after Kirk's killing.

Journalists and teachers have been fired for their comments on his death, with several conservative activists seeking to identify social media users whose posts about Kirk they viewed as offensive or celebratory.

The University of Mississippi placed Stokes on administrative leave around 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, according to the complaint.

A little under four hours later, Mississippi State Auditor Shad White, a vocal critic of what he calls “woke” initiatives in higher education, posted about the episode on X.

“To Ole Miss, did an Ole Miss employee just repost this insane reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder? Answer,” White wrote.

About an hour after that, university officials fired Stokes, according to her complaint. Then, 20 minutes later, Boyce released a statement that didn't name Stokes, but confirmed her firing and called her comments "hurtful" and "insensitive."

“The comments run completely counter to our institutional values of civility, fairness and respecting the dignity of each person,” Boyce said. “We condemn these actions and this staff member is no longer employed by the university.”

In Stokes's legal complaint, her attorney points out that the speech in question "related to a subject of obsessive news interest" and was not even hers, but someone else's that she reposted.

"By terminating Lauren for reposting the speech, the University says that Lauren is not allowed even to agree with a point of view held by a substantial portion of the nation," the complaint said. "Stated differently, the University says it gets to tell its employees what to think on matters of public concern. The interests in freedom of speech, indeed of thought, are extraordinarily high here."

Stokes said she has received death threats and bomb threats against her restaurant that forced it to close for two weeks. She is seeking damages, legal fees, and a declaration that Boyce violated her First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit was filed just over a week before Vice President J.D. Vance and Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk's widow, will speak at the University of Mississippi in Oxford on Oct. 29.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Susie Balfour, diagnosed with terminal breast cancer two weeks before her release from prison, has died from the disease she alleged past and present prison health care providers failed to catch until it was too late.

The 64-year-old left the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in December 2021 after more than 30 years of incarceration. She died on Friday, a representative for her family confirmed.

Balfour is survived by family members and friends. News of her passing has led to an outpouring of condolences of support shared online from community members, including some she met in prison.

Instead of getting the chance to rebuild her life, Balfour was released with a death sentence, said Pauline Rogers, executive director of the RECH Foundation.

“Susie didn’t just survive prison, she came out fighting,” Rogers said in a statement. “She spent her final years demanding justice, not just for herself, but for the women still inside. She knew her time was limited, but her courage was limitless.”

Last year, Balfour filed a federal lawsuit against three private medical contractors for the prison system, alleging medical neglect. The lawsuit highlighted how she and other incarcerated women came into contact with raw industrial chemicals during cleaning duty. Some of the chemicals have been linked to an increased risk of cancer in some studies.

The companies contracted to provide health care to prisoners at the facility over the course of Balfour’s sentence — Wexford Health Sources, Centurion Health and VitalCore, the current medical provider — delayed or failed to schedule follow-up cancer screenings for Balfour even though they had been recommended by prison physicians, the lawsuit says.

“I just want everybody to be held accountable,” Balfour said of her lawsuit. “ … and I just want justice for myself and other ladies and men in there who are dealing with the same situation I am dealing with.”

Rep. Becky Currie, who chairs the House Corrections Committee, spoke to Balfour last week, just days before her death. Until the very end, Balfour was focused on ensuring her story would outlive her, that it would drive reforms protecting others from suffering the same fate, Currie said.

“She wanted to talk to me on her deathbed. She could hardly speak, but she wanted to make sure nobody goes through what she went through,” Currie said. “I told her she would be in a better place soon, and I told her I would do my best to make sure nobody else goes through this.”

During Mississippi’s 2025 legislative session, Balfour’s story inspired Rep. Justis Gibbs, a Democrat from Jackson, to introduce legislation requiring state prisons to provide inmates on work assignments with protective gear.

Gibbs said over 10 other Mississippi inmates have come down with cancer or become seriously ill after they were exposed to chemicals while on work assignments. In a statement on Monday, Gibbs said the bill was a critical step toward showing that Mississippi does not tolerate human rights abuses.

“It is sad to hear of multiple incarcerated individuals passing away this summer due to continued exposure of harsh chemicals,” Gibbs said. “We worked very hard last session to get this bill past the finish line. I am appreciative of Speaker Jason White and the House Corrections Committee for understanding how vital this bill is and passing it out of committee. Every one of my house colleagues voted yes. We cannot allow politics between chambers on unrelated matters to stop the passage of good common-sense legislation.”

The bill passed the House in a bipartisan vote before dying in the Senate. Currie told Mississippi Today on Monday that she plans on marshalling the bill through the House again next session.

Currie, a Republican from Brookhaven, said Balfour’s case shows that prison medical contractors don’t have strong enough incentives to offer preventive care or treat illnesses like cancer.

In response to an ongoing Mississippi Today investigation into prison health care and in comments on the House floor, Currie has said prisoners are sometimes denied life saving treatments. A high-ranking former corrections official also came forward and told the news outlet that Mississippi’s prison system is rife with medical neglect and mismanagement.

Mississippi Today also obtained text messages between current and former corrections department officials showing that the same year the state agreed to pay VitalCore $100 million in taxpayer funds to provide healthcare to people incarcerated in Mississippi prisons, a top official at the Department remarked that the company “sucks.”

Balfour was first convicted of murdering a police officer during a robbery in north Mississippi, and she was sentenced to death. The Mississippi Supreme Court reversed the conviction in 1992, finding that her constitutional rights were violated in trial. She reached a plea agreement for a lesser charge, her attorney said.

As of Monday, the lawsuit remains active, according to court records. Late last year Balfour’s attorneys asked for her to be able to give a deposition with the intent of preserving her testimony. She was scheduled to give one in Southaven in March.

Rogers said Balfour’s death is a tragic reminder of systemic failures in the prison system where routine medical care is denied, their labor is exploited and too many who are released die from conditions that went untreated while they were in state custody.

Her legacy is one RECH Foundation will honor by continuing to fight for justice, dignity and systemic reform, said Rogers, who was formerly incarcerated herself.

by Michael Goldberg, Mississippi Today

March 21, 2025

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann's House counterparts took advantage of typos in a bill his Senate approved — bringing forth the most sweeping tax overhaul in modern Mississippi history.

But after a day's silence on the issue, Hosemann on Friday acted as though he knew little about the snafu.

Hosemann outlined what he said were victories in the bill headed to Gov. Tate Reeves with the Senate's typos unfixed. Then he attempted to end the press conference after taking, but not really answering, one question from Mississippi Today about the errors. As statehouse reporters kept pressing, Hosemann said he hadn't "focused" on the typos and didn't know whether the House had intentionally passed the bill to back the Senate into a corner.

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"I don't know whether they knew it had a flaw," Hosemann said. "Nobody told me that."

Hosemann said his team spent "hundreds of hours" drafting its tax overhaul legislation and "an untold amount of allocations and computations" went into the process. But the thoroughness Hosemann described did not prevent a few errant decimal points from making it into the legislation the Senate ultimately approved by mistake.

The upshot is that a bill eliminating the income tax at a much faster clip than Hosemann and many senators wanted, a position they stuck to for months, is set to be signed into law thanks to a clerical error. The law that will be headed to the governor's desk would dramatically alter Mississippi's tax structure.

As confusion swirled throughout the Capitol late Thursday and early Friday, many lawmakers said they were unclear how quickly the income tax elimination would happen. The Senate when it voted on its plan intended it to take many years and hinge on economic growth “triggers” being met. But decimal point typos essentially removed the triggers, meaning hundreds of millions of dollars in income tax revenue will have to be cut even if there is growth of just a few million dollars.

At most, the Senate plan would eliminate the income tax over a little more than a decade — roughly the same timetable as House leaders had proposed. Senate leaders had called that approach unwise, and thought the counteroffer they sent to the House would have taken 20 years or more, dependent on growth.

The House, which along with Gov. Reeves has favored eliminating the income tax at a faster rate, ran with the Senate's mistake. They approved the bill on Thursday and on Friday disposed of a procedural motion that will send it to the governor's desk.

Opponents of the changes say the poorest state in the union can’t afford to slash a third of its budget and still provide services to citizens, and that a shift to “regressive” taxation with an increased gasoline tax will hit poor people and those of modest means the hardest. Proponents say the bill will bolster Mississippi's "consumption-based economy" by drawing corporate investment and letting workers keep more of their money.

House Speaker Jason White on Friday afternoon issued a brief statement but did not address the typos in the Senate bill or the bizarre way his chamber found a way to send the tax plan to the governor.

"As of today, we are Building Up Mississippi by eliminating the income tax to further our state's competitive advantage and award our workforce! HB 1 has crossed a historic hurdle and is heading to the Governor," White wrote.

White thanked Reeves and House and Ways Chairman Trey Lamar. He did not mention Hosemann.

But Hosemann indicated negotiations might not be over, pointing to another tax reform bill his chamber approved Friday morning. Other Senate leaders said little about the mistake and operated as if everything were normal. They voted to invite conference on a separate Senate tax cut bill that remains alive.

Hosemann said he hadn't seen the House's tax bill head to the governor's office yet, and that he hoped the other Senate-approved bill would be the final product.

"There may be some clarifications needed and these issues have come up this morning. And so we've done SB 3095 and sent it back down to the House to take a look at it," Hosemann said. "Hopefully the governor will sign the amended legislation the Senate sent back to the House."

But it is doubtful the Senate has any leverage to force the House back to the negotiating table since much of the House's plan is already headed to Reeves, who vowed on Friday to sign it into law.

White, in his Friday statement, suggested the Legislature could use the Senate's tax bill as a vehicle for changing the structure of the Public Employees Retirement System, which had been a key wedge issue between the chambers in their negotiations over tax reform.

"I'm encouraged that the Senate has invited conference on SB 3095 to establish a dedicated stream of revenue to fund PERS going forward," White wrote, referring to his chamber's preferred approach to fixing the system.

Before taking questions at Friday's press conference, Hosemann celebrated elements of the bill headed to Reeves, including lowering the sales tax on groceries from 7% to 5%, increasing infrastructure funding and cutting PERS benefits for future employees to help shore up the system financially.

"Today is about the biggest win we have had on these issues in the history of this state," Hosemann said. "Now, if we need to clarify something, they'll clarify it. But what's happened today, both on the grocery tax, the income tax, and PERS … I think we've done so many positives. I don't want to take any of the glow from the House or the Senate on the work that we did for a year."

The events of the past few days were a "team effort," Hosemann added.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.