A Las Vegas-area judge will be banned from the courtroom after she was found guilty of using funds raised for a statue honoring a slain police officer for personal use, including plastic surgery.
A jury convicted Michele Fiore, a former Las Vegas city council member and state lawmaker who serves as a judge in Pahrump, about 60 miles from Las Vegas, of six counts of federal wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. .
Each charge carries a possible sentence of 20 years in prison.
The Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline had already suspended Fiore from judicial office at his $85,000 salary on July 24, but the commission now intends to suspend Fiore without pay at a hearing on Friday. KLAS reported.
Federal prosecutors said at trial that Fiore had raised more than $70,000 for a statue of a Las Vegas police officer shot and killed in 2014 in the line of duty, but instead spent the money on plastic surgery, rent and the his daughter’s wedding.
Las Vegas-area judge Michele Fiore will be banned from the courtroom after being found guilty of using funds raised for a statue honoring a slain police officer for personal use.
Fiore was suspended from her judicial position with her $85,000 salary on July 24, but the commission now intends to suspend Fiore without pay at a hearing this Friday.
“Michele Fiore used a tragedy to line his pockets,” said U.S. Attorney Dahoud Askar.
Fiore, who has been suspended without pay from her current elected position as justice of the peace in rural Pahrump, Nevada, will be sentenced on January 6, but will remain free while awaiting sentencing. Fiore’s term ends in January 2025.
His attorney, Michael Sanft, said Fiore will appeal the conviction the jury handed down after less than two hours of deliberation.
The city was outraged when officers Alyn Beck, 41, and her colleague Igor Soldo, 31, were shot to death by a pair of white supremacists while having lunch at a pizzeria in June 2014.
Fiore was a Las Vegas city councilman when he spoke at the dedication of a memorial park named for Beck in 2018 and announced he planned to raise money for a statue of the slain officer.
Michele Fiore raised funds for a statue of slain Las Vegas police officer Alyn Beck (left), shot to death along with her colleague Igor Soldo (right), but has been accused of spending the money.
Former Las Vegas City Councilwoman Michele Fiore (center) declines to answer questions after reading a statement to the media outside the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse in Las Vegas.
He then hired a company to create the statue and falsely told it that he had “appropriated discretionary funds through the city of Las Vegas” to pay for it.
Fiore created a charity in July 2019 to solicit donations, stating that “100 percent of contributions” would go to the cause.
But none of the money was used for the statue and all of it went directly into bank accounts she controlled, prosecutors said.
“Fiore directed potential donors to make a check payable to a bank account that Fiore controlled at the Bank of Nevada,” they explained. “Fiore directed that that money be spent not for the requested charitable purpose but for his own personal expenses.”
In 2021, FBI agents subpoenaed records and searched Fiore’s home in northwest Las Vegas in connection with his campaign spending. Sanft told jurors that the FBI investigation was “sloppy.”
Previously, her daughters featured prominently in a calendar she posed for in 2015, called ‘Michele Fiore’s Walk The Talk 2016 Second Amendment Calendar.’
That year, he sent an infamous Christmas card of his family holding handguns and semi-automatics, including his five-year-old grandson Jake, who was holding a Walther p22.
The Republican firebrand was also one of the first to support former President Donald Trump.
Fiore, a Republican who does not have a law degree, was appointed a judge in deep red Nye County by lawmakers in 2022, shortly after losing her campaign for state treasurer.
She was elected in June to fill the remaining term of a judge who died.
She was a Las Vegas council member from 2017 to 2022 and an outspoken supporter of gun rights.
The 54-year-old served in the state Legislature from 2012 to 2016, and made headlines posing with guns and her family for Christmas cards.
Fiore’s daughters, Sheena and Savanah, were featured prominently in a calendar she posed for in 2015, called ‘Michele Fiore’s Walk The Talk 2016 Second Amendment Calendar.’
That year, he sent an infamous Christmas card that featured his family holding handguns and semi-automatics, including his five-year-old grandson Jake, who was holding a Walther p22.
She defended the image, saying: “If you look very closely, you’ll see that his finger is not on the trigger.”
‘That five-year-old grandson of mine has complete control of the trigger.
“I think the giving and receiving of firearms is a great gift, and I think since Christmas is a family affair, our fundamental responsibility is to protect and make sure our family is safe.”
Months earlier, she had made headlines after saying she would shoot Syrian refugees herself when asked if Nevada should offer them asylum.
She briefly ran for governor of Nevada in 2022 before trying to be elected state treasurer.
In 2006, she co-wrote and starred in a low-budget semi-autobiographical film called Siren, playing the role of a wife and mother trying to become a rock singer.
‘What, are you kidding? “I’m about to fly to Paris and shoot them in the head myself,” she told a local radio station.
‘I do not agree with the Syrian refugees. I don’t agree with terrorists. I’m fine with putting them down, passing them out, just putting a piece of brass in their eye socket and ending their miserable life. I’m fine with that.’
Fiore has also been criticized for pushing “right to try” laws to allow patients to choose experimental treatments, claiming that cancer is a fungus and could be cured with baking soda.
“If you have cancer, which I think is a fungus, we can put a PICC line in your body and flush with, say, salt water, sodium carbonate, through that line and kill the fungus,” he said. in 2015.
And he pushed a bill that would allow students to carry guns on college campuses, suggesting it could decrease sexual assaults.
“If these young, attractive girls on campus have a gun, I wonder how many men want to assault them,” he told the New York Times.
“The sexual assaults that are occurring would decrease once these sexual predators take a bullet to the head.”
Her ties to rancher Clive Bundy and his family put her in the media spotlight during armed clashes between self-proclaimed members of the citizen militia and federal law enforcement in Bunkerville, Nevada, in 2014 and Malheur, Oregon, in 2016.
Fiore was credited with helping negotiate an end to the standoff and de-escalating the situation.
According to the Washington Post, she “began performing a complex balancing act, calming the terrified occupants while telling them she shared their outrage and also contacting the FBI to prevent a shootout.”
The FBI special agent in charge later said that Fiore’s help had been important and thanked him for his “significant help.”
