Fraud Friday – Man Charged with EIDL Fraud After Using Proceeds on $58,000 Pokémon Card

October 29, 2021

Delaney Sexton
Contributing Editor

Fraud Friday – Man Charged with EIDL Fraud After Using Proceeds on $58,000 Pokémon Card

“It was part of the scheme that Oudomsine unjustly enriched himself by obtaining EIDL proceeds under false and misleading pretenses including by making false statements about the number of individuals his company employed and his company’s gross revenue,” reads the court documents.

Vinath Oudomsine was charged with one count of wire fraud in the Southern District of Georgia for fraudulently seeking and receiving COVID relief funds from the SBA. On July 14, 2020, Vinath submitted an application to the SBA for an EIDL loan for a sole proprietorship that has purportedly existed since 2018. He claimed the business had ten employees and had a yearly gross revenue of $235,000.

The EIDL loan was approved for $85,000 and deposited into a bank account under Oudomsine’s name. Nearly six months later, he used the proceeds to purchase a Pokémon Card worth $57,789. It is not disclosed in the court documents what Pokémon Card was purchased.

In the last two years, rare Pokémon Cards have been selling for thousands of dollars as they have been picking up popularity again. A pack of Pokémon Cards sells for a few dollars, but in December 2020, a first edition Charizard holographic card sold for $369,000.

One charge of wire fraud carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison and up to $250,000 in fines.

“Vinath Oudomsine did knowingly devise and intend to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud, and to obtain money and property, by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises, and for the purpose of executing the scheme and artifice and to obtain money and property, caused interstate communications to be made over the Internet, in furtherance of the scheme and artifice to defraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343.”

Source:
Oudomsine Court Document