In Idaho man, who at one point was actually a Republican congressional candidate before
he lost in a primary has pleaded guilty this past week to fraud for using COVID funds to
buy himself, or at least pay off a car and to help pay people working on his political
campaign.
Let me read this in 2020 Nicholas Jones, age 36, Boise, Idaho applied for and received
$753,600 from COVID related assistance packages.
He certified that the money would be put into his business, but instead used a quote significant
portion to pay for his car, life insurance policies and political ads for his campaign
per the United States department of justice.
So before we get even deeper into what he did, let's talk about this.
He got 750, $3,000 for his business.
That of course this money was to go to pay for your employees and expenses that you have.
So you don't go under.
So what is his business?
Um, Jones, small business in Boise.
Idaho is a store selling puzzles and tabletop and board games, seven, $753,000 for his puzzle
business.
Now I do not have access to Mr. Jones business records, but I find it near impossible to
believe that a man in Idaho with his tiny little business selling puzzles and board
games ever in his life made $750,000, like, okay, yeah, we get the fraud that he pleaded
guilty to the wire fraud or that he pleaded guilty to.
But can we stop and think for a second?
How in the hell this man got $750,000 because I swear to God, if you can make $750,000 running
a business, selling puzzles and board games, then this is the last y'all are ever gonna
see a me and soon you're gonna see fair and balanced puzzles on the market because that
is an absurd and insane amount of money.
And I'm not gonna let that go without, you know, trying to get a piece of it.
but that's not a thing like that's not possible.
There is no way he was able to show real documents that said, yes, we're projected to lose, uh,
three quarters of a million dollars.
Like I would think puzzles with people trapped at home, probably would've been doing great.
Probably didn't even need the money.
It's like one of the few things people could do aside from play video games when you're
in lockdown,
Nevertheless he lost his primary election.
This was all in 2020, by the way.
So he lost the primary.
He files his, uh, you know, campaign finance report.
He leaves out of course, the money that he paid, his staff workers, his campaign staff
workers, which came from those COVID relief funds, because what he did was his employees
at the puzzle store that apparently is the most successful puzzle store in the country
would come in and he told him, Hey, if y'all work on my campaign, I'll pay you extra.
So they would do his campaign work and they'd get paid through the COVID funds to do that.
In addition to of course, using the COVID funds to pay for political ads and life insurance
policies and a car, he pleaded guilty, uh, the, uh, crimes that he's pleaded guilty to,
by the way, this is actually, uh, pretty remarkable.
He could face up to 40 years in prison faces a maximum total sentence of 40 years in prison.
Wow.
Well, I guess on the bright side, it's probably a lot of time to sit and do puzzles.