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Man Spends $57,000 Of COVID Relief Funds On Pokémon Card

Imogen Mellor

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Man Spends $57,000 Of COVID Relief Funds On Pokémon Card

Featured Image Credit: Oriental Light & Magic Inc. / The Pokemon Company

While we were all in lockdown, Pokémon cards once again had a surge in interest. The collectable card game focusing on the hundreds of pocket monsters has had waves of interest in its time, but recently it felt like everyone and anyone was trying to get their hands on ultra-rare cards. And for one man, that meant lying to the Unites States government about his business in order to buy a $57,000 card.

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As reported by The Telegraph, Vinath Oudomsine of Dublin Georgia has been charged with wire fraud after he used COVID relief funds on a Pokémon card. This sort of charge can have a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison as well as $250,000 in fines, but reportedly the sentence is lower than that. 

Here's a little history on importance of the Pokémon TCG...

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The Georgia man applied for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program back in July 2020, claiming that he had a business that had been in operation since 2018. Oudomsine claimed that he had ten employees and a gross revenue of $235,000 per year. To try and help with the economic strain of the pandemic, Oudomsine received a loan of $85,000 on August 4, 2020, then five months later, spent $57,789 on the Pokémon card.

Sadly it seems we don’t know which card this money was spent on. There are a variety of very high profile Pokémon cards that go for thousands of dollars given the opportunity. Though one may think it could be an original Charizard, there are rarer cards like the 1999 Pokémon Japanese Promo Tropical Mega Battle Tropical Wind card which were given to the top twelve players in a tournament, according to Dicebreaker

Nevertheless, fraud is a bad thing, who would have thought it? If you’re ever eligible for a loan, you probably shouldn’t even think about spending it on Pokémon cards… though maybe Yu-Gi-Oh! would be worth it, eh?

Topics: Pokemon

Imogen Mellor
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