Idiot Wingnut Grifter Michele Fiore Convicted Of Fraud, Headed For The Pokey

Lord, how we shall miss the big-bosomed comedy stylings of Michele Fiore, former Nevada state assemblywoman, former member of the Las Vegas City Council, former Republican primary-losing candidate for a congressional seat (depriving her of the opportunity to stake her claim to nuttiest blonde in the GOP caucus years before Marjorie Taylor Greene captured the title for life), former Cliven Bundy groupie, and as of Thursday, formerly never convicted of multiple white-collar felonies carrying potentially decades of prison time.

But there is a first time for everything — first kiss, first cigarette, first soliciting funds for a statue of a police officer killed in the line of duty and then blowing that money on personal stuff like rent and plastic surgery and your daughter’s wedding — and so now, barring a successful appeal or some hilarious “Orange Is the New Black”-style hijinks behind bars, we have perhaps seen the last of Fiore after a jury found her guilty of six federal counts of conspiracy and wire fraud. She had pleaded not guilty, natch.

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Fiore was serving on the Las Vegas City Council in 2019 when she started collecting funds through both a charity she had founded and her political action committee for what she claimed would be a statue of Alyn Beck, a member of the Las Vegas PD who was ambushed and killed along with his partner while they were eating lunch in a restaurant back in 2014. She allegedly did this despite knowing that a private company was already funding the statue as part of a park it was building in a planned community.

From January of 2019 to February of 2020, Fiore allegedly transferred donations as they came in from her campaign accounts to her daughter’s bank account. The funds were then withdrawn in cash. Prosecutors say the dates of these big withdrawals lined up with Fiore making “large personal purchases.” And while Nevada law allows a person to use leftover campaign funds for a different purpose like donating to a charity, it apparently does not allow that person to spend those funds on injections of lip filler.

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Fiore’s daughter, Sheena Siegel, who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the original indictment, took the stand at one point to claim that she had used the money for various events and expenses for the charity. Then prosecutors started asking her specific questions about some of those checks, and Siegel clammed up and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. So the jury then was ordered to disregard all of her testimony. Boy, is visiting day at whatever prison Fiore winds up in going to be awkward.

And this isn’t even the first time Fiore has been caught with her hand in this particular cookie jar. Back in early 2020 — again, right around the time she was soliciting and spending funds for the Beck statue — she was accused of paying her daughter’s catering company $109,000 out of her PAC over 18 months for what she called “advertising” and “special events.”

So farewell, Michele Fiore. We will always have the laughs. Also we will always have that terrible no-budget movie you starred in a decade ago with … Erin Gray? From TV’s “Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century” and “Silver Spoons”? That Erin Gray?

Well. That and a dollar will get you some toothpaste at the prison commissary.

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[AP]

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