A Nevada man who invented a fictitious company and fraudulently obtained $163,100 in federal coronavirus relief funds while on parole in Oregon has been sentenced to more than two years in federal prison.

Justin David Goulet of Las Vegas spent most of the COVID relief money on travel, living expenses, cars and illegal drugs. In addition to serving 27 months in prison and three years’ supervised release, he was also ordered to pay back all the money he stole to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Over the past two years, the federal government has pursued dozens of suspected Oregon fraud cases tied to pandemic business aid. An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion nationwide in COVID-19 relief funding.

Goulet, 36, is one of more than 50 people who have been charged in Oregon for their roles in attempting to steal more than $778 million in federal COVID relief funds. Thus far, 23 of them have been convicted for their crimes.

They include Andrew Aaron Lloyd, an Oregon man who fraudulently obtained $3.4 million in federal relief funds and used them to purchase more than 15,000 shares of Tesla stock and 25 rental properties in Oregon and California, and Salwan Adjaj, a former West Linn dentist who used nearly $11million in stolen funds to speculate in stocks and cryptocurrencies.

The amount of money Goulet stole pales in comparison, but federal prosecutors argued he has a long criminal history — fourteen felony convictions and numerous misdemeanors — that includes forgery and fraud and has spent much of his adult life either in prison or on parole.

Court records show Goulet filed two applications for disaster-relief loans in April 2021 while on parole in Oregon. One of the applications was subsequently approved.

To obtain the money, Goulet registered a straw company with Oregon’s Secretary of State, falsely claimed to be doing business as an independent contractor and submitted bogus tax filings to substantiate his fictional revenues and payrolls.

In 2019, the year he claimed his imaginary enterprise had lost revenue due to the pandemic, he’d been in an Oregon prison completing concurrent sentences for felony forgery and theft. In the applications for COVID relief funds, Goulet falsely denied that he had been convicted of any felony within the last five years.

In February 2022, a federal grand jury in Portland returned an indictment charging Goulet with wire fraud. In August of that year, he pleaded guilty.