TARRANT COUNTY (WBAP/KLIF News) – A Tarrant County woman received a 5-year prison sentence for voting in the 2016 presidential election while she was on parole.
43-year-old Crystal Mason of Rendon was indicted for illegal voting last year and found guilty by State District Judge Ruben Gonzalez on Thursday.
Mason had been on supervised release for a conviction of conspiracy to defraud the government in 2011. Prosecutors said she and her then husband, Sanford Taylor Hobbs III, inflated their clients tax refunds at their tax and notary business in Everman.
She was ordered to pay more than $4.2 million in restitution.
When she went to cast her ballot in 2016, Mason checked that she was a United States citizen but failed to check that she was on parole, which would have prevented her from voting.
Mason has claimed that it was an honest mistake.
She is not the first woman in Tarrant County to be sent to prison for illegal voting.
In February 2017, Rosa Maria Ortega of Grand Prairie, a Mexican national with a green card, was sentenced to eight years in prison after falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen on her ballot. She told a jury that she was confused about the rights granted to a legal permanent resident and a U.S. citizen.
Voter fraud has been a hot-button issue since the 2016 elections. It’s an issue that officials in Texas have vowed to crack down on.
In 2016, Dallas County sequestered almost 700 mail-in ballots that were deemed suspicious in a city council race after receiving numerous complaints from voters who said they never requested a ballot.
Dallas police arrested Migeul Hernandez in connection with the case on a charge of illegal voting. His case is pending.
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