The Great Grift: COVID-19 fraudster used stolen relief aid to purchase a private island in Florida
The Great Grift: COVID-19 fraudster used stolen relief aid to purchase a private island in Florida
Patrick Parker Walsh is one of thousands of thieves who perpetrated the greatest grift in U.S. history — potentially plundering more than $280 billion in federal COVID-19 aid.
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
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...
“Now that I’ve defrauded the government I can buy what I always wanted, that Pokémon card I have had my eye on”
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?
I wonder what the chances are that private Florida island will be washed away by a hurricane within the next nine years
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.
Guy’s gotta have a hobby.