Jury finds Michele Fiore guilty on federal wire fraud charges

Prosecutors accused Fiore of raising tens of thousands of dollars through her charity and political action committee for a statue honoring Metropolitan Police Department officer Alyn Beck, who was shot and killed with his partner in 2014. But instead of using the money for the statue, prosecutors said Fiore spent the donations on rent, plastic surgery and payments on her daughter’s wedding.

Fiore “used a tragedy to line her pockets,” federal prosecutor Dahoud Askar told the jury Thursday.

As the guilty verdict was read Thursday afternoon, Fiore looked straight ahead, her hands clasped in front of her. U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey scheduled sentencing for Jan. 6.

Fiore’s attorney, Michael Sanft, said that she intends to appeal the verdict after the sentencing.

“We’re still in it, we’re still in the thick of things,” Fiore, 53, told reporters Thursday, declining to comment further on the case.

Fiore most recently served as a Pahrump justice of the peace. She was suspended by the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline in July, following the indictment.

Deliberated less than two hours

The jury deliberated for less than two hours before finding Fiore guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and six counts of wire fraud.

“Typically when people are that fast, they’ve already made up their minds, even before the closing arguments,” Sanft said Thursday. “So it had to have been some type of testimony that occurred in the middle of trial that caused the majority of them to say, ‘oh, that’s all we needed.’”

Prosecutors declined to speak with reporters after the verdict was read.

Jury deliberations began Thursday afternoon after attorneys presented their closing arguments to a packed courtroom.

“She is an elected official, it’s her job to safeguard the public trust,” Askar told the jury. “Instead, she abused it through her actions.”

Askar said Fiore raised the money from January 2019 through February 2020, continuing to solicit funds even after the park with the statue was opened in the northwest Las Vegas Valley. He said that although thousands of dollars were sent to her charity and PAC accounts for the statue, both accounts had been drained to just a few hundred dollars by February of 2020.

Prosecutors have accused Fiore of soliciting donations and lying to donors about the funds going towards the statue. They said she knew the statue’s cost was going to be covered by Olympia Companies, which developed the Alyn Beck Memorial Park as part of the Skye Canyon planned community.

Witnesses included Gov. Joe Lombardo

Several high-profile donors and business owners testified throughout the trial, including Gov. Joe Lombardo.

Lombardo said that he authorized a $5,000 donation from his campaign fund to go to Fiore’s political action committee to help pay for the statue.

On Thursday, Sanft argued that Lombardo admitted to doing “essentially the same thing” as Fiore, by using funds donated for him to run for office for a different purpose, in this case a charity donation. Nevada law allows leftover funds from a private campaign to still be used by the candidate.

Federal Prosecutor Alexander Gottfried told the jury there was a “pretty big difference” between Lombardo donating leftover campaign funds, and Fiore taking money meant for charity and then “spending it on plastic surgery.”

“Gov. Lombardo is not on trial here, what he did is not anything like what the defendant did,” Gottfried said.

Sanft argued Thursday that prosecutors did not do enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Fiore intended to defraud donors. He also attacked a search warrant carried out by the FBI at Fiore’s home in 2021, and accused the FBI of “spinning” evidence to mislead the jury.

Sanft showed the jury a large poster depicting an optical illusion, that could be viewed as either an old woman or a young woman.

“When you look for one thing only, you can miss everything else,” Sanft said.

He argued that despite seizing documents in that search warrant, prosecutors did not show the jury receipts that tracked what exactly the donations were spent on.

Prosecutors have pointed to bank records showing donation checks deposited into Fiore’s accounts, and then transferred to Fiore’s daughter and turned into cash withdrawals that line up with the dates Fiore made large personal purchases.

Fiore’s daughter Sheena Siegel took the stand earlier this week, claiming she spent money from her mother on various events and charity expenses. The jury was told to disregard her testimony after Siegel invoked her Fifth Amendment rights to not incriminate herself, refusing to answer questions from prosecutors about checks made to her personal account.

Prosecutors told the jury that Siegel, who has not been charged, conspired with her mother to spend the money on Fiore’s personal expenses.

Sanft told reporters Thursday that he did not regret calling Siegel to the stand. He said that she was initially on the government’s witness list, and that he wanted to question her when prosecutors did not call her to the stand. He claimed it was the “government’s error” during questioning that caused Siegel’s testimony to be stricken from the record.

“The problem is Sheena still had very important information for our defense, and so as a result we had to put her up on the stand,” he said.

During closing arguments, Sanft again said that the FBI’s investigation was “sloppy” and that the jury was not shown enough records.

“Sloppy is not good enough,” he said. “They have to be on point. There’s no leeway here for mistakes, there’s no leeway here for interpretation.”

Packed courtroom

The courtroom was full on Thursday with attorneys, Fiore’s supporters and a handful of woman who opposed Fiore, and who sat through the length of the trial.

One of the women, Molly Taylor, was founder of the “Expel Michele” committee, which sought to recall Fiore from office when she was a councilwoman. Taylor had refused to turn over a final recall petition to the city clerk’s office to keep private the identities of people who signed it, because she claimed Fiore had threatened supporters.

Taylor was charged with a misdemeanor count of failing to submit a recall petition within the specified time frame, a count that she plead no contest to in September 2021, court records show. She told reporters Thursday that she spoke with the FBI after she pleaded to the charge, but declined to give details about the communications.

“Michele Fiore got everything she deserved today,” Taylor said.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240.