Dave Sunday, Attorney General of Pennsylvania, announces the expansion of the Law Enforcement Treatment Initiative (LETI) to Cumberland and Perry counties. LETI is a collaborative program launched by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General and law enforcement to divert individuals in need to treatment services, in Carlisle, PA on May 22, 2025.
Commonwealth Media Services
Commonwealth Media Services
Dave Sunday, Attorney General of Pennsylvania, announces the expansion of the Law Enforcement Treatment Initiative (LETI) to Cumberland and Perry counties. LETI is a collaborative program launched by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General and law enforcement to divert individuals in need to treatment services, in Carlisle, PA on May 22, 2025.
Ten people are charged with election-related crimes as a result of a year-long investigation by the state attorney general and a related investigation in Monroe County, the officials involved announced Friday.
The charges stem from a voter registration drive leading up to the 2024 election, in which a state coordinator offered illegal financial incentives to canvassers who then fabricated voter information to meet quotas.
“We are confident that the motive behind these crimes was personal financial gain, and not a conspiracy or organized effort to tip any election for any one candidate or party,” Attorney General Dave Sunday said in a press release Friday.
The attorney general’s office, as well as commissioners for Berks, Lancaster, Lehigh, Monroe and York counties, said last year that inaccurate or deceptive voter registration forms were not accepted, and therefore did not lead to falsified voter registrations or votes cast.
All of the criminal charges announced Friday relate back to a single canvassing firm called Field+Media Corps, according to the state’s criminal complaint and Monroe County District Attorney, Mike Mancuso.
Field+Media sent Guillermo Sainz from Arizona, where the company is based, to set up a canvassing operation in Pennsylvania, according to state filings. Sainz is listed as a manager of the company in Arizona business records.
“Sainz instituted unlawful financial incentives and pressures in his push to meet company goals to maintain funding which in turn spurred some canvassers to create and submit fake forms to earn more money,” according to the affidavit of probable cause filed with the charges.
In Pennsylvania, it is illegal to create a financial incentive based on quotas for collecting voter registrations. Sainz faces three counts of a misdemeanor charge, each with up to a $2,500 fine and one year in jail. Francisco Heredia, who runs Field+Media and is a city councilmember in Mesa, Arizona, did not respond to questions for this story.
The canvassers who worked for Sainz face more severe charges. Sunday’s office charged six people with felonies for tampering with public records, as well as five additional misdemeanors each. Conviction for a third-degree felony is punishable with up to seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
Amos Clay, Anya McCurdy, Meghan McDevitt and Joseph Jameson of Lancaster County face charges related to their work for Field+Media. So does Samantha Szukiewicz of York County and Richard Perez of Lehigh County.
In Monroe County, Mancusco’s office brought similar charges against Ashely Nicole Arias, Jessica Clark, and Gary T. Hall, and Arias and Clark face multiple felony charges for forgery.
Reached by phone on Friday, Clay said he was contacted on Wednesday by Lancaster County investigators who asked that he turn himself in. Clay said he does not yet have an attorney and declined to answer questions about the case.
The statements from Sunday’s office and Mancuso stress that charges are allegations and defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
How the operation worked
A national voter registration nonprofit called the Voter Registration Project contracted with Field+Media to register voters in several Pennsylvania counties. Field+Media was then responsible for hiring canvassers to carry out the registrations.
Sainz coordinated that effort, according to court filings. He hired county leads, who then hired canvassers.
Canvassers registered voters on paper forms, which they then scanned and sent to the Voter Registration Project for verification. Once verified, Sainz was responsible for delivering the forms to counties. Four unnamed canvassers interviewed by the attorney general’s office, some or all who were also charged, were fired for turning in bad forms, according to the filings.
The contract states Field+Media “will not pay or compensate canvassers on a per-card basis regardless of whether such a basis for compensation is permitted by law,” according to state filings.
But Sainz allegedly incentivized canvassers, offering double pay through “fake” shifts if they registered enough people, according to state filings.
Then, Sainz allegedly falsely reported to the Voter Registration Project that he turned in over 1,000 forms, that he then held onto for weeks or months and submitted at the deadline. Investigators found that “a great deal” of the forms were duplicate of voters who submitted registrations on other dates, while others seemed to be completely made up. Per its contract, Field+Media was expected to turn in the forms within 10 days of collecting them, though in Lancaster County a large batch was delivered on the final day before the pre-election cutoff.
Both Field+Media and the Voter Registration Project fully cooperated with the investigation, according to state filings. The Voter Registration Project’s mission “is to help as many eligible people as possible from historically marginalized communities register to vote so they can exercise their right as US citizens to participate in elections,” according to a press statement. It said it holds partners to the “highest standards of quality control” and that the court filings show the organization demonstrated no wrongdoing.
How the investigation came together
The investigation began days before the 2024 presidential election when several county election offices noticed batches of suspicious registration forms being submitted at or near the registration deadline.
District attorneys and commissioners in each of the affected counties described the same process — suspicious registration forms were detected by election office staff, commissioners who serve on the election boards were notified, and they then sent the forms to their respective district attorneys. Both the Department of State, which oversees aspects of statewide elections, and the Office of the Attorney General were also notified.
Several counties and the Department of State were aware of the suspicious registration forms as early as Monday, Oct. 21, 2024, according to John Christy, chairman of the Monroe County commissioners. His county’s election director had flagged 30 registrations over the preceding weekend, then emailed election directors across the state to be watchful for similar problems, Christy said.
On Oct. 25, Lancaster County’s District Attorney Heather Adams and the county’s three commissioners held a press conference announcing the county was reviewing a batch of 2,500 registrations, of which a subset were allegedly fraudulent. This was the first time the issue was made public.
Adams said the press conference was held to send a message that her county’s elections were secure and to alert other Pennsylvania counties to potential voter registration fraud.
Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons repeated that claim, accusing the Department of State of not notifying counties of the issue, though they were likely already aware.
“[The press conference] served to warn other counties to be on alert, as they were not being warned by the Secretary of the Commonwealth, who is supposed to ensure this kind of information is distributed around the state,” Parsons said in a statement on Friday.
The Department of State worked closely with the Office of the Attorney General and the investigation shows election safeguards in the state work, according to department spokesperson Matt Heckel. He did not address Parsons’ comment.
Investigators for the attorney general interviewed Sainz for the first time on Oct. 31, 2024, asking about how Sainz ran the operation and whether he could explain the faulty forms delivered at the last-minute.
Sunday took over the investigation when he was sworn into office on Jan. 21, 2025. Berks, Lancaster, Lehigh and York counties turned over their investigations to the attorney general’s office.
No charges will be brought in Lehigh, as Field+Media efforts there were much less significant, according to court filings and to Lehigh District Attorney Gavin Holihan.
Mancuso in Monroe County said his office was ready to file charges at the start of the year, but waited for the attorney general’s office. More charges may be coming in his county, Mancuso said. The attorney general’s office said they also continue to investigate.
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