His COVID loan paid for a $57,000 Pokemon card, feds say. Now GA man is prison bound
A 31-year-old man accused of blowing his coronavirus relief loan on a collector’s Pokemon card will spend the next three years in prison after he pleaded guilty to felony fraud charges in Georgia.
Vinath Oudomsine was sentenced to 36 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia said in a news release on Monday, March 7. He was also ordered to pay $85,000 in restitution — the total value of the Economic Injury Disaster Loan he received as part of the alleged scheme.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, also known as the CARES Act, was passed in March 2020 and expanded eligibility and waived certain requirements for businesses applying to the EIDL program.
“Congress appropriated funding to assist small businesses struggling through the challenges of a global pandemic,” U.S. Attorney David H. Estes said in the release. “Like moths to the flame, fraudsters like Oudomsine took advantage of these programs to line their own pockets — and with our law enforcement partners, we are holding him and others accountable for their greed.”
Oudomsine has remained in detention and could not be reached for comment by McClatchy News on March 7. A defense attorney representing him did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Oudomsine is from Dublin, Georgia, about 54 miles southeast of Macon. He was charged by criminal information on Oct. 19 and pleaded guilty the following week, court filings show.
According to his charging documents, Oudomsine submitted an application for an EIDL in July 2020 on behalf of a business he said has been operating since 2018.
The application stated that his business had 10 employees and gross revenue of $235,000 in the year before the pandemic. Prosecutors said the Small Business Administration subsequently awarded Oudomsine an $85,000 loan.
In January 2021, Oudomsine is accused of using the bulk of that money to purchase a Charizard Pokemon trading card for $57,789 — which the government said he has agreed to forfeit as part of the court proceedings against him.
A judge said in December that the card was being held by a relative in Atlanta, Georgia, and Oudomsine had “offered no explanation for his failure” to surrender it.
The judge denied him a bond hearing as a result, saying “the Court is by no means convinced that defendant is not presently engaged in criminal activity through his failure to retrieve and surrender the Pokemon card from the possession of a relative.”
It wasn’t clear which Charizard card Oudomsine reportedly bought, but certain rare and valuable Pokemon cards can sell for thousands of dollars.
A 1999 First Edition Shadowless Holographic Charizard #4, for example, sold for $369,000 in December 2020, Dice Breaker reported. Retired rapper Logic bought a mint-condition first-edition shadowless holographic PSA 10 Charizard at auction for $220,574 in October the same year.
This story was originally published March 7, 2022 at 3:09 PM with the headline "His COVID loan paid for a $57,000 Pokemon card, feds say. Now GA man is prison bound."
