A Las Vegas-area judge will be barred from the courtroom after being found guilty of using funds raised for a statue honoring a slain police officer for personal use, including plastic surgery.

A jury found Michele Fiore, a former Las Vegas city councilwoman and state lawmaker who serves in Pahrump Justice, about 60 miles from Las Vegas, guilty of six counts of federal wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Each count carries a possible sentence of 20 years in prison.

The Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline had already suspended Fiore from judicial duties with his $85,000 salary on July 24, but the commission now intends to suspend Fiore without pay at a hearing Friday, KLAS reported .

Federal prosecutors said during the trial that Fiore raised more than $70,000 for the statue of a Las Vegas police officer shot and killed in 2014 in the line of duty, but instead spent the money on plastic surgery, rent and marriage of his daughter.

Michele Fiore, a Las Vegas-area judge, is expected to be barred from the courtroom after being found guilty of using funds raised for a statue honoring a slain police officer for personal purposes.

Fiore was suspended from her judicial duties with her $85,000 salary on July 24, but the commission now intends to suspend Fiore without pay at a hearing this Friday.

“Michele Fiore took advantage of a tragedy to line her pockets,” said federal prosecutor Dahoud Askar.

Fiore, who has been suspended without pay from her current position as a justice of the peace in rural Pahrump, Nevada, will be sentenced Jan. 6 but will remain free pending sentencing. Fiore’s term ends in January 2025.

His lawyer, Michael Sanft, said Fiore would appeal the jury’s conviction after less than two hours of deliberation.

The city was outraged when officers Alyn Beck, 41, and her colleague Igor Soldo, 31, were shot and killed by two white supremacists while eating lunch at a pizzeria in June 2014.

Fiore was a Las Vegas city councilor when she spoke at the opening of a memorial park named after Beck in 2018 and announced she planned to raise money for a statue to the murdered officer .

Michele Fiore raised money for a statue dedicated to murdered Vegas police officer Alyn Beck, left, shot alongside colleague Igor Soldo, right, but was accused of spending the money.

Former Las Vegas City Councilwoman Michele Fiore, center, refuses to answer questions after reading a statement to the media outside the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse in Las Vegas.

She then hired a company to create the statue and falsely represented to the company that she “appropriated discretionary funds through the City of Las Vegas” to pay for it.

Fiore set up a charity in July 2019 to solicit donations, saying “100% of contributions” would be donated to the cause.

But no money was used for the statue and it all went directly to bank accounts she controlled, prosecutors said.

“Fiore asked potential donors to write a check to a bank account that Fiore controlled at the Bank of Nevada,” they explained. “Fiore ordered that this money be spent not for any solicited charitable purposes, but for his own personal expenses.”

In 2021, FBI agents subpoenaed records and searched Fiore’s home in northwest Las Vegas in connection with his campaign spending. Sanft told the jury that the FBI’s investigation was “botched.”

Her daughters were previously featured prominently on a calendar she posed for in 2015, dubbed “Michele Fiore’s 2016 Walk The Talk 2nd Amendment Calendar.”

That year, she sent an infamous Christmas card of her family holding pistols and semi-automatics, including her five-year-old grandson, Jake, who held a Walther p22.

The Republican firebrand was also an early supporter of former President Donald Trump.

Fiore, a Republican who does not have a law degree, was appointed as a judge in deep-red Nye County by lawmakers in 2022, shortly after losing her campaign for state treasurer.

She was elected in June to complete the unexpired term of a deceased justice.

She served as a Las Vegas city councilor from 2017 to 2022 and is an outspoken advocate for gun rights.

The 54-year-old served in the state Legislature from 2012 to 2016, making headlines by posing with guns and his family for Christmas cards.

Fiore’s daughters, Sheena and Savanah, were featured prominently on a calendar she posed for in 2015, dubbed “Michele Fiore’s 2016 Walk The Talk 2nd Amendment Calendar.”

That year, she sent an infamous Christmas card of her family holding pistols and semi-automatics, including her five-year-old grandson, Jake, who held a Walther p22.

She defended the image, saying: “If you look really closely you’ll see his finger is not on the trigger.

“My five-year-old grandson has full control of the trigger.

“I think giving guns as gifts and receiving guns as gifts is a great gift, and I think because Christmas is a family affair, our ultimate responsibility is to protect and keep safe of our family.”

A few months earlier, she made headlines after saying she would shoot Syrian refugees herself when asked whether Nevada should offer them asylum.

She ran briefly for governor of Nevada in 2022 before attempting to be elected state treasurer.

In 2006, she co-wrote and starred in a low-budget semi-autobiographical film called Siren, playing a wife and mother who attempts to become a rock singer.

‘What, are you kidding me? I’m about to fly to Paris and shoot them in the head myself,” she told a local radio station.

“I don’t agree with the Syrian refugees. I don’t agree with terrorists. I agree to demean them, darken them, just put a piece of brass in their eye socket and end their miserable life. I agree with that.

Fiore was also criticized for pushing “right to try” laws to allow patients to choose experimental treatments, claiming that cancer is a fungus and could be cured by baking soda.

“If you have cancer, which I believe is a fungus, and we can insert a PICC line into your body and we flush, for example, salt water, sodium carbonate, through that line and get rid of the fungus,” she said. in 2015.

And she championed a bill that would allow students to carry guns on college campuses, suggesting it could reduce sexual assault.

“If these hot young girls on campus have a gun, I wonder how many men would want to attack them,” she told the New York Times.

“The sexual assaults that are occurring would decrease once these sexual predators are shot in the head.”

Her ties to rancher Clive Bundy and his family put her in the media spotlight during armed clashes between self-proclaimed citizen militia members and federal law enforcement in Bunkerville, Nevada, in 2014 and in Malheur, Oregon in 2016.

Fiore was credited with helping negotiate an end to the standoff and defusing the situation.

According to the Washington Post, she “began conducting a complex balancing act, calming the terrified occupiers while telling them she shared their outrage and also contacting the FBI to prevent a shooting.”

The FBI special agent in charge later said Fiore’s assistance had been significant and thanked her for her “significant assistance.”