A former West Virginia official who made headlines in 2016 for calling then-First Lady Michelle Obama an "ape in heels" has been sentenced to jail for embezzlement.
A former West Virginia official who made headlines in 2016 for calling then-First Lady Michelle Obama an "ape in heels" has been sentenced to jail for embezzlement.
Pamela Ramsey Taylor, 57, admitted in court to falsifying a claim that her home was damaged during severe flooding in West Virginia in 2016, for which she was given more than $18,000 in FEMA relief funds. As previously reported, Taylor was facing up to 30 years in prison if convicted. On Friday, however, she was sentenced to 10 months in jail.
She was also required to pay $18,149.04 in restitution, according to prosecutors.
Taylor previously worked as the director of Clay County Development Corp., a nonprofit which provides services to elderly and low-income residents in the central West Virginia area. She was let go in 2016 after she penned a Facebook post about Michelle Obama following President Trump's election.
"It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House. I'm tired of seeing a [sic] Ape in heels," she wrote.
A few months later, West Virginia was struck by catastrophic flooding that destroyed at least 500 homes and left six people dead.
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Pamela Ramsey Taylor, 57, admitted in court to falsifying a claim that her home was damaged during severe flooding in West Virginia in 2016, for which she was given more than $18,000 in FEMA relief funds (West Virginia Department of Transportation/Handout via Reuters)
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Taylor reportedly claimed that her home in Procious, W. Va., along the Elk River, was damaged by the flooding, but that her primary address was on Main Street.
It was later revealed that Taylor and her husband actually live in the town of Bickmore, and were not impacted by the floods, Daily Mail reports. The couple does, in fact, own a Procious property but no one was living there at the time of the flooding.
"There’s no such thing as a little bit of FEMA fraud," U.S. Attorney Mike Stuart said in a statement.
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"Taylor’s fraudulent scheme took FEMA dollars away from those who needed it the most."
Fox News' Lucia Suarez Sang contributed to the reporting of this story.
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