What Did Gina Chiles Do? Mother of U.S. Gymnast Going to Prison
What did Gina Chiles do? Find out why the mother of U.S. Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles was sentenced to 366 days in federal prison.
July 27 2021, Published 1:35 p.m. ET
The Tokyo Olympics are an exciting time for the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, especially because the team has a good shot at winning gold medals. However, U.S. gymnast Jordan Chiles is facing a tough situation back home. Her mother, Gina Chiles, is going to federal prison for wire fraud.
Initially, Gina was supposed to report to prison in the middle of Jordan’s time in Tokyo, but a federal judge granted Gina a little more time with her daughter.
“Every moment that I watch Jordan is the most amazing moment as a mom,” she said on The Today Show, her voice cracking with emotion. “And so I just am looking at it as not bittersweet, but just sweet, period, that she’s here.”
Gina was charged with wire fraud after diverting more than $1 million in client funds, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
According to court documents cited by The Orange County Register, Gina ran the commercial properties management business Inspire Vision Property Management LLC.
Between 2014 and 2018, Chiles “devised and intended to devise a material scheme to defraud clients of lnspire Vision and to obtain money and property by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s office court filings.
The filings said that Gina's clients deposited funds in bank accounts that she controlled. The filings said, “[Chiles] promised clients that she would use those funds to pay bills, oversee repairs and renovations to specific properties, and for costs associated solely with the management of commercial property. Instead, [Chiles] diverted those client funds, deposited the funds into bank accounts owned and controlled by her and used the funds for her own personal use.”
Gina diverted more than $1 million in client funds as part of the scheme, the filings said. A government sentencing memo, meanwhile, alleged that she used most of the money to prop up her businesses but spent $300,000 or more on personal expenses. “Those included expenditures of more than $53,000 at retail stores and personal service providers, $166,000 in investments in her children’s businesses, and nearly $40,000 in untraceable cash outlays,” the memo stated.
She was originally scheduled to report to prison the day of the women’s gymnastic team’s final.
For the wire fraud case, Gina faced a maximum of 20 years in federal prison. But she agreed to a plea deal in March 2020 and pleaded guilty to one charge of wire fraud. She was sentenced to a 1-year and 1-day sentence that November.
Along with the sentence, Gina must also make $1,218,877.78 in restitution. She is subject to three years supervised release following her time in prison, according to The Register.
Gina's prison sentence was scheduled to start on July 27, which is the same day as the women’s gymnastics team final, according to People. But earlier this month, a federal judge approved her attorneys’ request to delay the sentence start date until Aug. 26, the magazine reports, to give Jordan “some additional time to have her mother's emotional support and guidance during such a monumental time her young life.”