In a masterclass of ‘do as I say, not as I do,’ Lawrence, Massachusetts Mayor Brian DePena, 61, has been charged with wire fraud and money laundering after allegedly helping himself to a generous $1.5 million serving of COVID relief loans that were supposed to help struggling small businesses.
Apparently, DePena interpreted ‘small business relief’ as relief *from* the burden of having to look at all that delicious pandemic money sitting around doing nothing useful — like, say, keeping actual small businesses alive during a global health crisis.
Federal prosecutors allege that DePena, the very person voters entrusted to shepherd his community through one of the most economically devastating periods in modern history, decided the real emergency was his own bank account. The charges of wire fraud and money laundering suggest this wasn’t exactly an accidental clerical error involving a misplaced decimal point. This was, allegedly, a whole situation.
To recap: there was a pandemic. Congress allocated emergency funds specifically to help small business owners keep their lights on and their employees fed. And the mayor of Lawrence — the guy whose literal job description includes ‘help the people’ — allegedly treated that fund like his own personal stimulus package.
DePena now joins a remarkably unexclusive club of officials who discovered, too late, that federal investigators are surprisingly thorough when it comes to tracking $1.5 million in suspicious transactions. Who could have seen that coming? (Everyone. Everyone could have seen that coming.)
His constituents, meanwhile, are presumably enjoying the particular flavor of betrayal that comes with learning the person they elected to protect them during a crisis was allegedly too busy committing federal crimes to get around to it.
*Source: UPI Odd News*
Original story via UPI Odd News
