Paul Pelosi Jr., 55, son of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), appears to have dodged potential federal criminal dodges, even as some of his business associates are set to be sentenced to prison, according to ZeroHedge.
This is reportedly at least the seventh time that Pelosi Jr. has avoided legal trouble while companies and business associates around him are taken down by prosecutors and suffer substantial consequences for alleged criminal acts.
The Daily Mail reported in January that two convicted fraudsters were set to be sentenced in federal court over their "shady dealings" involving a San Franciso "flop house" Pelosi Jr. partially owned that had its own checkered past of code violations and poor living conditions.
According to federal prosecutors, Bill Garlock and Gina Rodriguez pleaded guilty to mail fraud and money laundering after being indicted in 2022 on allegations that they had defrauded investors into giving them over $1 million to improve the run-down residential property in San Francisco's Mission District that Pelosi Jr. reportedly owned a 20% stake in.
Garlock and Rodriguez instead used the fraudulently obtained funds they received to cover a variety of their own personal expenses and lavish lifestyle. Pelosi Jr., by way of his ownership stake and being listed as the selling realtor, was not named in the federal indictment, however.
This appears to be his second brush with the law on that particular property, as he was included in a prior 2021 federal indictment, albeit only as "Client 9," for a 2017 bribery scheme that involved plans to address the building's litany of problems and a building inspector and permit expediter who both ultimately went to prison for soliciting bribes to get the work done.
Interestingly enough, Pelosi Jr. was also previously sued by the building's former owner, Karena Feng, with whom he'd had a romantic relationship, when she alleged that he had conspired with Garlock and Rodriguez to force her out, though that suit was dismissed in court on technical grounds.
The Daily Mail reported that the Government Accountability Institute's vice president of research, Seamus Bruner, believes that Pelosi Jr. has managed to dodge any legal trouble because of his politically powerful mother and preferential treatment from the Justice Department.
"The US Justice Department has a history of sheltering and protecting the family members of powerful political elites," Bruner told the outlet before providing a few obvious examples.
"We've seen it time and again with the Clintons and the Bidens," he added. "There can be no question that a last name like Pelosi is going to carry weight among California-based prosecutors who want to advance their careers at the federal level."
This is far from the only time that Pelosi Jr. has appeared to escape legal consequences for his ties to business associates and companies that were probed or punished by federal authorities, as the New York Post provided six other examples in a 2022 report.
That includes his serving as an executive for a database marketing firm that was investigated for selling consumer information to fraudsters who bilked vulnerable senior citizens out of their money with scam calls, as well as his co-founding of an environmental investment firm that was run by two individuals previously convicted of fraud who failed to disclose their criminal past to other investors.
Pelosi Jr. was also a senior executive on the board of a biofuel company that was later dissolved after its founder was convicted of defrauding investors out of millions of dollars, and for a time served as a top executive for a pharmaceutical company that was investigated for testing new drugs on human subjects without first obtaining approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
He also served as a chief executive for a supposed non-profit charity organization affiliated with the United Nations that in reality was a fraudulent cryptocurrency exchange scam, and was previously a top adviser to a lithium mining company that was busted for fraudulently awarding millions of shares to insiders, including Pelosi Jr., for which everyone paid far less than what the stock shares were actually worth.
