Kingwood Woman Sentenced to 71 Months in $435,000 Hurricane Harv

Kingwood Woman Sentenced to 71 Months in $435,000 Hurricane Harvey Home Fraud CaseA Kingwood woman has been ordered to repay HUD and FEMA $537,209 and spend 71 months in federal prison. Sharai Poteet, 56, pleaded guilty June 1st in a case involving a seven-bedroom home built with Hurricane Harvey recovery funds. On her applications, Poteet claimed 11 people lived in her household. That included seven children and an adult with a disability. Prosecutors said the information was false. She received a custom home worth $435,000 through a HUD-funded recovery program, the largest home that program had built at the time.Investigators also found five fraudulent applications to FEMA for storms from 2017 through 2024. At sentencing, the court was shown evidence that Poteet looked up the punishment for lying to FEMA online and soon afterward filed a fraudulent hurricane relief application. Poteet threatened to kill a whistleblower to silence them during the investigation. She assaulted a federal agent while trying to flee an operation to seize her phone. The court heard about the emotional toll of those threats on the witness and their family, and about forgeries she committed after being charged.Her guilty plea covered wire fraud, fraud in connection with a major disaster, threatening to kill a witness and assaulting or impeding a law enforcement officer. Judge Kenneth Hoyt imposed the prison sentence along with three years of supervised release afterward. Poteet was taken into custody after sentencing, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas, which announced the outcome November 10th.The conviction and sentence may still be subject to appeal or other post-conviction proceedings.