The Story of Jaime McGowen
Free Jamie is not just a campaign; this is the account of how a young woman became a victim of legal failure that prioritized pleas over truth.
Jamie is a young mother of a fifteen year old son. She is a graduate of Cal State University- San Bernardino. She has worked for her father’s accounting firm for over 20 years and has managed the Las Vegas office for the last five years. Jamie is the primary financial support for her family. She is a normal hardworking mother who was accused of something she didn’t do by a “whistleblower” who was trying to deflect responsibility from himself.
A Travesty of Justice
This story started back in November 2022, when Jaime was getting ready to take her son to school. Suddenly her apartment was swarming with Federal agents and she was arrested and jailed. Charged with fraud and a multitude of other charges, she endured over two years of stressful court hearings.
The indictment was packed with overcharging and was based on false information. The threat of 20 years in prison intimidated her into pleading guilty to something she didn’t do. The truth of what happened wasn’t relevant.
The expected sentence was three months. The defense attorney repeatedly discussed this amount of time in exchange for a plea. The actual sentence was 37 months. Her story was never told in court.
The attorneys play a game with peoples lives. The prosecutor packs the indictment to intimidate the defendant into a plea. The defense attorney misrepresents the potential sentence to convince the defendant to accept the plea.
Jaime was told answering one PPP question 'wrong' made her guilty. Her attorney claimed she'd serve about three months if she pleaded, versus 20 years if she went to trial. This intimidated her into accepting the plea.
Unjust Consequences: The Aftermath
The sentence hearing was a shock. We all expected three months. That morning her attorney said it could go as high as four and one half months. When the Judge announced 37 months we couldn’t believe it. Her attorney was clearly not prepared for the hearing. She twice had to apologize to the Judge for not being prepared for questions the Judge asked. Jaanswered one Jamie was given five weeks to prepare for a 37 month sentence and the truth of what happened was never told in court. A sentence of this length may by appropriate for someone who falsified documents to intentionally defraud the PPP program. It’s not appropriate for someone who merely answered one question wrong on a PPP application.
Jamie is the primary support of her teenage son. Incarceration will cause her income to cease. It will also leave a gaping hole in her business which will threaten the jobs of the five employees.
In prison her income will be zero. She will be unable to pay any restitution while incarcerated and her income will be limited after she’s released. The government will spend a lot of money incarcerating her and will probably never receive significant payments on the penalties.
The issues in this case are taxes and PPP funding. The government department with expertise in taxes is the IRS. The department with expertise in PPP funding is the SBA. The tax issue was referred to the FBI and the PPP issue to the US Attorney. Both came to erroneous conclusions and created a prosecution based on false information from informants trying to deflect blame from themselves.
The US Attorney created a mythical “scheme” based of false assumptions and bad facts. They alleged Jamie based her PPP applications of falsified payrolls. This is not true. They then packed the indictment with wire fraud and money laundering charges based on transactions that every business engages in every day.
Unveiling the Truth: A Betrayal of Justice
The allowable PPP funding was based on the prior year’s payroll tax returns. The “whistleblower” filed false payroll returns and instead of investigating the US Attorney accepted them as fact even though they were clearly falsified. Jamie filed returns based on the actual payroll for the year. The US Attorney had this information ( it was in the discovery they provided) but she ignored it because it didn’t fit the scenario she was trying to paint. Instead Jamie was accused of filing false returns to defraud the government. Using the governments own calculations and a little common sense it’s clear that Jamie’s numbers were the correct ones. The most important part of the US Attorney’s case was based on false information.
Jamie was bullied by the system, prosecutor, and even her attorney, into admitting fraud under a 20 year incarceration threat. Her meticulous calculations and innocent intent were disregarded.
Make Your Voice Heard
Join the fight to support justice for Jaime.