NORFOLK — New York Attorney General Letitia James is scheduled to make her first appearance Friday in U.S. District Court in Norfolk after being indicted earlier this month on fraud charges centered around a house she purchased here in 2020.
James is expected to plead not guilty.
In anticipation of the crowd that such a high-profile case may draw, U.S. District Judge Jamar K. Walker issued a ruling last week in an effort to minimize the disruption. On Thursday, barriers were set up across the street from the downtown courthouse, and Norfolk officials said the 500 to 600 blocks of Granby Street and the 100 blocks of East and West Bute Street would be closed from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday.
Walker, who was nominated to the court in 2023 by former President Joe Biden, is assigned to the case.
Friday’s hearing will begin at 11 a.m. in a first floor courtroom, with seating available on a first-come basis, according to the judge’s order. A nearby magistrate courtroom with TV screens will be available for those unable to get into the main courtroom, but its seating is also limited.
A federal grand jury in Alexandria indicted James Oct. 9 on one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution. Each count carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
Home in Norfolk, Virginia, on Oct. 10, 2025. (Billy Schuerman/The Virginian-Pilot)
James — who successfully sued President Donald Trump in a 2022 civil case accusing him of inflating his real estate assets — has called the charges against her “baseless” and “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.”
The indictment alleges that in order to qualify for a lower interest rate, James misrepresented how she planned to use a two-story, pale yellow house off Lafayette Boulevard she purchased in August 2020.
The mortgage terms on the $137,000 house on Perrone Avenue required that she use it as a secondary residence, yet the indictment claims James rented it to a family of three. The misrepresentation, the indictment asserted, allowed James to save close to $19,000 over the life of the 30-year loan.
The five-page document doesn’t name the family living in the house, but online records show that Nakia Monique Thompson lives there. The Virginian-Pilot was unable to reach Thompson for comment, and no one answered the door at her house this week.
A person familiar with the case said Thompson is James’ great niece, and that James bought the house for Thompson and her three children in an effort to help them through some tough times. The source said James has stayed with Thompson at the house on multiple occasions, and that Thompson told a grand jury she’s never paid rent.
James’ lead attorney is Washington lawyer Abbe D. Lowell, who has represented numerous high profile clients, including Hunter Biden, former U.S. senator Bob Menendez, and Lisa Cook, a federal reserve governor that Trump’s Justice Department also has accused of mortgage fraud. Lowell also represented Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner during the investigations into alleged Russian interference in 2016.
Lowell will be assisted by Norfolk attorney Andrew Bosse, a former federal prosecutor and head of the Baughman Kroup Bosse law firm’s Norfolk office. Bosse was a deputy criminal chief in the U.S. Attorney’s Norfolk division for several years, and prosecuted securities, bank and wire fraud cases, among others before going into private practice.
The only federal prosecutor listed in the case is Lindsey Halligan, a former personal attorney for Trump who he named U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia last month. The office’s previous leader, Eric Siebert, resigned in September, with press reports saying Trump wanted him out for not obtaining charges against James and former FBI director James Comey.
Two other top prosecutors in the Norfolk office, Elizabeth Yusi and Kristin Bird, were recently fired after they declined to move forward with charges against James, several press reports said. The New York Times reported on Oct. 17 that Yusi told colleagues she did not find probable cause to proceed on the charges.
Past charges against niece
James purchased the home around the time that felony larceny charges against Thompson were resolved in Chesapeake Circuit Court.
Thompson, now 36, was charged in August 2019 with stealing just over $400 in merchandise from Dillard’s and just over $800 from Macy’s, with court documents saying she used wire cutters to attempt to cut a purse loose from a security cord.
Chesapeake police charged Thompson with three felony larceny counts, larceny conspiracy and possession of burglary tools. She was also charged with three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, given that children were with her at the time.
Thompson pleaded guilty to two larceny counts in March 2020 and later was sentenced to six months in jail. She was incarcerated for about a month before being released to home electronic monitoring, according to jail records.
Separately, the North Carolina Department of Corrections lists Thompson as “an absconder” for “willfully avoiding supervision by her probation officer” following misdemeanor assault and trespassing convictions in 2011.
Keith Acree, communications director for the state’s department of corrections, said the Forsyth County district attorney has determined the case to be “non-extraditable” due to “the low level of the offenses.”
In other words, Thompson faces arrest — and the possible imposition of her suspended sentence — if she’s picked up in North Carolina, but that state will not attempt to retrieve her from Virginia.
Thompson could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Two home purchases
Records show James bought the Peronne Avenue home around the time her grandniece began serving her sentence in the 2020 Chesapeake case.
According to deed documents filed in Norfolk Circuit Court, James borrowed $109,000 when she made the $137,000 purchase in August 2020.
The agreement with OVM Financial, a Virginia Beach lender, said the home would be James’ “second home,” and that she needed to keep the property for her “personal use and enjoyment” for at least a year.
Experts say purchasers who intend to reside in a home typically qualify for lower interest rates than those who rent it out to others, given the relative risks involved. In this case, the indictment said, James got an interest rate of 3% — lower than the 3.815% she would have gotten if she indicated it was a rental property.
James bought a second home in Norfolk three years later, city deed records show. She and another niece — Thompson’s mother Shamice Thompson-Hairston — co-purchased a $240,000 home on Sterling Street, off West Little Creek Road, in August 2023.
In a document turning over her power-of attorney to Thompson-Hairston just before that purchase, James declared in a notarized statement that “I intend to occupy this property as my principal residence.”
But neither of the pending federal charges stem from a second loan James took out for that purchase. No one appeared to be home at that residence Wednesday, with several “No Trespassing” signs out front.
Jane Harper, jane.harper@pilotonline.com
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
