Glamorous Vegas judge is set to be banned from court over what she did to planned statue
A Las Vegas-area judge is set to be barred 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 Las Vegas-area judge is set to be barred 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 councilwoman and state lawmaker who sits as a Pahrump Justice, about 60 miles away from Las Vegas, of six counts of federal wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Each count carries a possible penalty of 20 years in prison.
The Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline had already suspended Fiore from judicial office with her $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 the 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 her daughters wedding.
Michele Fiore, a Las Vegas-area judge, is set to be barred from the courtroom after she was found guilty of using funds raised for a statue honoring a slain police officer for personal use
Fiore was suspended from her judicial office 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 her pockets, federal prosecutor Dahoud Askar said.
Fiore, who has been suspended without pay from her current elected position as a justice of the peace in rural Pahrump, Nevada, will be sentenced on January 6 but will remain free while she awaits sentencing. Fiore’s term ends in January 2025.
Her attorney, Michael Sanft, said Fiore will appeal the conviction which the jury returned after less than two hours of deliberation.
The city was outraged when officers Alyn Beck, 41, and his colleague Igor Soldo, 31, were gunned down by a pair of white supremacists as they ate lunch at a pizza restaurant in June 2014.
Fiore was a Las Vegas City councilwoman when she spoke at the opening of a memorial park named after Beck in 2018, and announced she planned to raise money for a statue to the murdered officer.
Michele Fiore raised funds for a statue to murdered Vegas cop Alyn Beck, left, shot dead alongside his colleague Igor Soldo, right, but has been charged with spending the money
Former Las Vegas City Councilwoman Michele Fiore, center, refuses to take questions after reading a statement to the news media outside the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse in Las Vegas
She then contracted a company to create the statue and falsely told it she had appropriated discretionary funds through the City of Las Vegas to pay for it.
Fiore set up a charity in July 2019 to solicit donations, claiming that 100 percent of the contributions would go to the cause.
But none of the money was used for the statue and all went directly to bank accounts she controlled, prosecutors said.
Fiore instructed prospective donors to write a check to a bank account that Fiore controlled at Bank of Nevada, they explained. Fiore directed that money to be spent not for the charitable purpose solicited but for her own personal expenses.
FBI agents in 2021 subpoenaed records and searched Fiores home in northwest Las Vegas in connection with her campaign spending. Sanft told the jury that the FBI´s investigation was sloppy.
Her daughters previously featured prominently on a calendar she posed for in 2015 dubbed Michele Fiores 2016 Walk The Talk 2nd Amendment Calendar.
That year, she sent out an infamous Christmas card of her family holding pistols and semi-automatics, including her five-year-old grandson Jake who held a Walther p22
The Republican firebrand was also an early supporter of former President Donald Trump
Fiore, a Republican who does not have a law degree, was appointed as a judge in deep-red Nye County by lawmakers in 2022 shortly after she lost her campaign for state treasurer.
She was elected in June to complete the unexpired term of a judge who died.
She was a Las Vegas councilwoman from 2017 to 2022 and an outspoken gun rights supporter.
The 54-year-old served in the state Legislature from 2012 to 2016, making headlines posing with guns and her family for Christmas cards.
Fiores daughters, Sheena and Savanah, featured prominently on a calendar she posed for in 2015 dubbed Michele Fiores 2016 Walk The Talk 2nd Amendment Calendar.
That year, she sent out an infamous Christmas card of her family holding pistols and semi-automatics, including her five-year-old grandson Jake who held a Walther p22.
She defended the image saying: If you look real close, youll see that his finger is not on the trigger.
That five-year-old grandson of mine has total trigger control.
I think giving firearms as a present and getting firearms as a present is a great present, and I think because Christmas is a family affair, our ultimate responsibility is to protect and make sure our family is safe.
Months earlier, she had hit the headlines after saying she would shoot Syrian refugees herself when asked if Nevada should offer them asylum.
She ran briefly for Nevada governor in 2022 before attempting 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 mom who tries to become a rock singer
What, are you kidding me? Im about to fly to Paris and shoot em in the head myself, she told a local radio station.
I am not okay with Syrian refugees. Im not okay with terrorists. Im okay with putting them down, blacking them out, just put a piece of brass in their ocular cavity and end their miserable life. Im good with that.
Fiore has also come under fire for having pushed Right to Try laws to allow patients to choose experimental treatments, claiming that cancer is a fungus and could be cured by baking soda.
If you have cancer, which I believe is a fungus, and we can put a PICC line into your body and were flushing with, say, salt water, sodium carbonate, through that line and flushing out the fungus, she said in 2015.
And she pushed a bill that would allow students to carry guns on college campuses, suggesting it could decrease sexual assaults.
If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them, she told the New York Times.
The sexual assaults that are occurring would go down once these sexual predators get a bullet in their head.
Her ties to rancher Clive Bundy and his family put her in the media spotlight during armed standoffs between self-described citizen militia members 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 diffusing the situation.
According to the Washington Post, she began conducting a complex balancing act, calming down the terrified occupiers while telling them that she shared their outrage and also reaching out to the FBI to prevent a shootout.
The FBI special agent in charge said afterwards that Fiores help had been important and thanked her for her significant assistance.
