A 40-year-old North Carolina man is facing 22 criminal charges, including forgery and unlawfully signing a petition, after he allegedly submitted fraudulent signatures for the Republican-backed initiative to repeal Proposition 4 earlier this year.

According to court documents, the Uintah County clerk-auditor flagged as many as 165 of the 305 signatures the man turned in as potentially fraudulent.

Police interviewed nine people whose supposed signatures were allegedly collected by the North Carolina man, according to court records, and the nine told police they never signed the petition. Two others were dead at the time they purportedly signed the petition, records show.

Uintah County prosecutors charged the man with 11 counts of forgery, a third-degree felony, and 11 counts of unlawfully signing the petitions, a class A misdemeanor.

According to social media and LinkedIn accounts that appear to belong to the North Carolina man, he has worked for the North Carolina Republican Party. He’s posted photos of himself with Vice President JD Vance and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Patriot Grassroots, the signature-gathering company that the Republican-backed Utahns for Representative Government hired to collect signatures for the Proposition 4 repeal campaign, was employing the North Carolina man, who stayed in Vernal for about three weeks from late December through mid-January, according to court records.

Rob Axson, chair of the Utah Republican Party and UFRG, said the group expects “complete integrity and compliance with the law” from its contractors and “anyone falling short of that should face the legal consequences and be held accountable.”

“We have supported investigations into the couple of examples of bad actors,” he said. “The actions of these individuals do not take away from the hundreds of paid gatherers and well over a thousand volunteers who worked with honesty, commitment and principle.”

A warrant for his arrest was issued earlier this month, and, while in North Carolina, he was arrested and later released, the Vernal Police Department said in a statement. The department has been working with North Carolina authorities to have him returned to Vernal to face the charges, they said.

“This isn’t about one petition or one position,” a statement posted on Uintah County’s social media page said. “It’s about making sure the process works the same way every time — for everyone.”

In February, Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson said he had turned over several packets with suspicious signatures to the Utah County attorney for further investigation and had identified a total of 27 with signatures that did not match those on file and from people who, when contacted, said they had not signed the petitions.

Utahns for Representative Government gathered 161,962 valid signatures for their bid to repeal Proposition 4 — the 2018 voter-approved initiative that created an independent redistricting commission and banned partisan gerrymandering.

That was more than needed to meet the statewide goal, but they ultimately fell short in five state Senate districts and did not qualify to be on the November ballot after more than 10,500 people withdrew their signatures.

Had the initiative made it onto the ballot and been approved by voters, it would have allowed the Legislature to redraw a court-adopted congressional map that created a Democrat-leaning district in Salt Lake County — which will likely cost Republicans one of their four U.S. House seats from Utah.

Financial disclosures show that UFRG paid Patriot Grassroots more than $4 million, which was provided by a group aligned with President Donald Trump.