The stolen funds financed the high-rolling lifestyle of Lee E. Price III, a Houston resident with prior felony convictions for forgery and robbery. He swindled nearly $1.7 million by submitting bogus aid applications on behalf of businesses that existed only on paper, according to court records.

Price wasted little time blowing $14,000 on a Rolex and more than $233,000 for a flashy white Lamborghini Urus, a luxury SUV that can go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds. He also spent thousands of dollars at the Casanova, a Houston stripclub. Price was sentenced to more than nine years in prison.

Vinath Oudomsine of Georgia also created a fake company that he claimed made $235,000 a year and had 10 employees. A few weeks after Oudomsine applied for the pandemic aid, the government rushed him $85,000 to keep his non-existent business afloat.

Oudomsine spent nearly $58,000 on a 1999 Charizard Pokémon card

  • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Who would’ve thought that offering “loans” with no oversight, then mysteriously “forgiving” those loans, with no audit, would result in an enormous volume of theft? Almost like the theft was the intended goal…

    • Artyom@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      You mean the one where Trump removed the anti-fraud enforcement part of the bill first?

      • TheJims@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        And put himself in charge of oversight? The man who’s name is synonymous with fraud…

        • HubertManne@kbin.social
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          8 months ago

          and then when its investigated and identified under biden the gop acts like its bidens fault because finding out was under his administration. Makes me think of trump being mad at all the covid testing and data collection.

  • snekerpimp@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    “Now that I’ve defrauded the government I can buy what I always wanted, that Pokémon card I have had my eye on”

  • girlfreddy@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    The chasm in sentencing is beyond understanding … a brown man steals $85k and gets 3 years while a white doctor steals $5.5 million and gets 8 years. How does that make any sense at all?

  • poweruser@lemmynsfw.com
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    8 months ago

    I wonder what the chances are that private Florida island will be washed away by a hurricane within the next nine years

    • stella@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Eh. More than likely he won’t have the money to develop it.

      How do you get electricity out there? Plumbing?

      Who cuts down those trees?

      It could be nice for a little shack, but that’s about it.

      • SheeEttin@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Solar and generator. Well, spring, or RO plant, and leach field.

        There are plenty of companies who do this kind of work. Access is either by water or helicopter.