106. The Tornado (Kim Neiman)
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A cluster of storms formed over eastern Nebraska just after noon on Monday, June 16, 2014.

A warm front followed closely behind the black clouds that had just rained hell upon the big cities. The cool air and the warm air eventually collided, swirling together, creating a massive rotating supercell that had meteorologists at the National Weather Service questioning the accuracy of their instruments.

At 3:38 pm, a tornado watch turned into a tornado warning. A small funnel cloud touched down in an open field just east of Madison. It was an EF0 on the enhanced Fujita scale, which means no damage and wind speeds that did not exceed 85 miles per hour. Even more pathetic was that the tornado, if you even want to call it that, only lasted two minutes

But as we all know, it's never wise to taunt Mother Nature. This warning here, and they continue to be a threat as we head throughout the rest of this afternoon. Now the good news is, this is generally rural farmland, but again with the farms, you do have farmhouses without buildings, but right now, no reports of major damage. Two minutes later, another tornado dropped as the storm rolled towards Stanton County.

It was a huge one that rumbled across the highway toward a group of farms. Three houses were flattened down to the basement. Cars were launched a quarter of a mile through the air. Luckily, no one was hurt, but there were near misses. Darren Schneider was fishing at the lake when the storm roared by. He told 81 Seconds author Lorraine M. Topp that he took cover under a bridge and held onto one of the pillars for dear life.

From his vantage point, he could see telephone poles, uprooted trees, and his fishing equipment whizzing by him. "'It was huge,' he said of the tornado. "'It was brown with circulating debris.' I got so scared and said, "'God, help me. It was an EF-4 tornado, 400 yards wide, with 200 mile-per-hour winds. It was on the ground for almost half an hour and traveled over 12 miles, and the storm was just getting started.'"

Before that massive tornado completely dissipated, at 4pm on the dot, another massive tornado touched down east of the town of Stanton. Another EF4 traveling northeast, picking up strength and speed along the way, heading directly for the small village of Pilger, population 350.

By 4:16 PM, the 500 yard wide monster was entering the village. On its way in, the Pilger sand and gravel pit on the outskirts transformed the twister's color.

and the feedlots, known by the Dinklage family, where they housed up to 75,000 cattle, were in its direct path. Helpless in the fields, the cattle were pelted with pieces of fencing, irrigation systems, and various machinery. The lucky ones were killed instantly. Next, the tornado cruised down Pilger's First and Main Streets like a parade float. In 81 seconds, 70% of the entire village was destroyed.

Workers at the farmer's co-op reportedly hid in a safe while the grain bins surrounding them exploded, resulting in a corn and soybean shower from the heavens. Next door, at the Pilger's store, half a dozen people, including a FedEx delivery driver, hid in a dairy cooler as the building around them was torn apart and evenly distributed across the countryside.

Around the corner at Midwest Bank, the bank's president, Gene Willers, locked eight people in a vault. They would be safe there. There was a prepaid cell phone and pre-drilled air holes waiting for them, a result of a 1998 robbery where several employees were forced inside. Willers said he did not spin the vault's dial, just in case it was up to someone else to set them free. Then he hid in the tight crawlspace underneath the bank as the violent tornado wiped it from the landscape.

across the street from the bank said a trailer home it was occupied by candy murphy and her young daughters five-year-old callie dixon and three-year-old robin dixon the family including candy's oldest son cody who was not home at the time had moved to pilger from alabama four months earlier a trailer home is not the ideal place to ride out an ef4 tornado candy realized this and made a run for the bank across the street with callie robin and their dog turbo in tow

It was too late. The unforgiving winds sent Candy and Callie flying 50 feet through the air. Three-year-old Robin sheltered between the legs of a corn dryer as debris whipped around her. The EF4 tornado finished off the business district before making quick work of the adjacent residential neighborhood. Only slabs were left in its wake. On its way out, the tornado destroyed the middle school and the St. John's Lutheran Church for good measure.

the village of Pilger would never be the same. Fire Chief Corey Colmus is where the fire station once stood. Everything was just destroyed. I mean, it's like he came in here and just blew the whole town up, literally. I mean, he had stuff everywhere. As the tornado rambled through the fields northeast of Pilger, a second tornado spawned two miles southeast of the village. Twins are not uncommon occurrences in massive supercells like the one that terrorized Nebraska that day.

But typically there's one powerful tornado and one weaker tornado. But this was different. This was a rare phenomenon. The Pilger tornado's twin also proved to be an EF4. Luckily it avoided the already devastated village and traveled parallel to its sibling for several miles until the two tornadoes were about one mile apart, even eventually crossing paths and swapping places across Highway 275 in an eerily beautiful victory dance.

I highly recommend checking out severe weather documentarian Pecos Hanks' Day of the Twins video on YouTube if you need a fresh reminder of your insignificance on this earth. Unfortunately, a 74-year-old Army veteran and delivery driver from Clarkson, Nebraska, experienced the terror firsthand. David Hurtout was fleeing east from the Pilgrim Tornado on Highway 275 when its twin tornado cut off its path.

David's car was launched off the road into a nearby field. His lifeless body was later discovered by a passerby. By 4:45 p.m., the twins had vanished. Fortunately, the second born did not cause nearly as much damage as its older sibling, although one, especially blessed family's home, was hit by both.

The storm continued on for hours, producing a total of six tornadoes in Nebraska alone that day, including another EF4 near the town of Wakefield, 28 miles north of Pilger.

Rare, awesome and terrifying. A storm powerful enough to generate twin tornadoes. Dangerous enough to kill at least one person. Pilger is pretty much a ghost town. But then again, it's not even that considering there's no buildings left to abandon. Most of the town looks like what you see behind me here, reduced to rubble. City Hall is gone, fire department is destroyed.

public libraries severe damage it's total devastation total devastation when the sky lightened and the winds died down the pilgrimites crawled out of basements vaults and coolers to find an unrecognizable village it smelled like propane which was leaking from damaged tanks but mostly all was quiet and calm except for the calls and responses from separated loved ones

It's estimated that 75% of the village of Pilger was damaged, 40% of the homes were destroyed, almost 100% of the homes were mutilated in some form or fashion. No more school, no church, no government administrative building, no electricity, no trees. One could now see from one side of the 193 acre village to the other without the slightest impediment.

It was like God dragged two fingernails across the land. One man told the Norfolk Daily News. Unfortunately, some of the animals were killed. And we're going to take care of those. We have a veterinarian out here. We're taking care of these diseased animals in the most humane way.

in the most humane way we can search and rescue missions comprised the immediate moments after the disaster but amazingly besides the cattle there were a few injuries less than two dozen none of them critical only four people were required to stay at the nearby hospitals overnight not like they had homes to return to anyway however the most tragic story to emerge happened while surveying the damage

Villagers found three-year-old Robin Dixon standing alone on Main Street with Turbo, the injured family dog. Her mother, Candy Murphree, and her older sister, five-year-old Callie, were lying on the ground several yards away, completely unresponsive. Robin explained the tornado was carrying away her mom and sister, but she had stomped her foot like Elsa from Frozen, which stopped everything and saved them.

There was no helicopter available to rush Candy and Callie away for medical assistance because another storm was brewing. They were loaded in an ambulance and driven to the hospital. Candy Murphy remained in a coma for a month but recovered. Turbo lost a leg and five-year-old Callie Dixon died en route.

the storm had claimed another life. We believe that she was in a mobile home on Main Street and was completely devastated and we found her in that vicinity along with another critically injured female.

Pilger was evacuated that evening by school bus to Red Cross shelters and such. Surrounding fire departments and emergency personnel took the lead in managing the situation since the village's own resources had been reduced to dust. And we also talked with the Stanton County emergency manager who compared Pilger to a war zone saying the hit was extreme. That's why we're evacuating the town because it's going to get dark on us. We have a storm coming in.

Tomorrow morning will be another day we can start cleanup. It's just that bad. Cleanup would have to wait, but soon the villagers, former villagers and volunteers from all over the country would swarm the town to lend a hand. That's what Pilger Pride was all about. This is Stanton County Sheriff Mike Unger. Again, we had over 1,800 volunteers here today.

I have a feeling we're going to probably have that same number, if not more, tomorrow by the sounds we're getting. Obviously, we have all kinds of assets on ground. We're getting help from numerous Midwestern states. We're getting calls. We had one from Virginia wanting to bring two teams here. So we're trying to work forward. I think there's a lot of progress made today, but as you can see, as much progress has been made, there's still a lot of work to be done.

Yeah, there was no fixing this overnight. There was still a tremendous amount of work to be done in Pilgrim, Nebraska. In every sense of the word, they were looking at years of construction and considerations. Where should the new school be built? What should we call the new store? Is it even worth it to rebuild any of this at all?

A steady presence was required to hold the village together, to encourage a rebirth and to wade through the red tape associated with one. Pilger needed someone intelligent and tough, someone organized and trustworthy, a natural leader who's well-versed in seemingly everything. Thankfully, the village of Pilger had the perfect person for the job.

A village clerk in Nebraska falls victim to a mysterious international scam. Or does she? On this episode of Swindled.

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Well, from the first minute I saw the tornado and then when we came back in and saw what it had done to the town, it was never in my mind to leave Pilger. Some people believe that in two to three years we'll die. I do not believe that. Kimberly Nyman, a volunteer firefighter and EMT for the village of Pilger, was riding in the back of an ambulance on her way to the site of the first tornado near Stanton when the second tornado touched down just outside of her village.

Kim had lived in Pilger for almost 20 years with her husband Ted, who was driving the ambulance, and three sons, one of whom was riding along. Kim watched the EF-4 destroy their beloved village through the back window. Kim Nyman wore a lot of hats in Pilger. In addition to being a volunteer first responder, she also trained lifeguards, mowed the grass at the cemetery, and sang in the church choir.

She was a member of the Stanton County Emergency Management Team and the Nebraska Fire Instructor Society and an adjunct to EMS instructor for a nearby community college.

Kim Nyman was also Pilger's village clerk and treasurer. Appointed in 1998, she managed the cash inflows and outflows. It was her name written on the village's checks. Nobody could have told you where Pilger was. You know, I live from Pilger in Nebraska. Where is that? And, you know, I've never heard of it. Now, you know, oh, you're from that tornado place. Mama Kim, as everyone called her, had kept Pilger running for years.

In 2007, she was recognized for it, winning the award for Outstanding Village Clerk by the Nebraska Municipal Clerks Association. It was a dead heat that year. In 2008, she became a Certified Master Municipal Clerk. Then in 2014, as if Kilm Nyman's plate wasn't already full, the tornadoes happened. It was chaos, for the lack of a better word. But she took control.

kiln niman coordinated with the federal and state emergency management agencies fema and nema she helped create a search and rescue plan she talked to the mayor and declared disaster and she made sure that all the rules and regulations were followed to avoid any hiccups along the way my responsibility is to the village and to make sure that we get anything and everything we can get and get everything fixed back to the way it was she told the daily nebraskan

After clearing the debris, Kim Nyman managed all the building permits for new construction. She crunched the numbers for all the projects. Reportedly, just the cleanup alone cost a million bucks. Emergency funding would pick up some of the tab, but Nyman estimated that the Village of Pilgrim's debt would amount to $5 million. But it would be worth it.

It's still ground zero, she told the Norfolk Daily News. But everything's tripled the amount of what it was before, if not more.

Even with all the tornado stuff that I deal with every day, I have all my normal stuff that I do. The accounts receivable, the accounts payable, payroll, all that stuff, you know, that's still going on. It's like your job grew suddenly times 100.

Not to mention Kim Nyman had lost her home and workplace in the tornado. She worked tirelessly from a makeshift office in a large metal warehouse, quote, "Juggling four cell phones in an effort to run the village's daily business, answer questions from confused volunteers and overwhelmed citizens, take information from fellow village and county employees, and deal with the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

Kim Nyman had also lost her 18 and a half pound cat, Panzer, in the storm, but only temporarily. She was found alive and well under a bookcase in what used to be City Hall. Everyone was sharing the load. You can't control the weather though, so those things happen. But the cool thing about those happening is we as Nebraskans always pull together. We do it better than any other state, so...

Well stated. Larry the cable guy appeared on the morning blend this morning. Debris still litters Pilgrim, Nebraska, seven days after EF4 tornadoes stormed through town. But on Monday, help was on every corner.

Even rock star Bret Michaels signed up for duty. Unfortunately, a major hurdle soon stymied rebuilding efforts. Three-quarters of the village of Pilger is in a floodplain. The 60 to 70 year old homes that were demolished were built before modern guidelines. The floodplain map was redrawn in 2004, which meant that any new houses built in Pilger must sit one foot above base flood elevation, which means no basements.

It was a tough pill to swallow for Pilgrimites, considering many of them owed their lives to basements. There were other safety measures they could take, like building a safe room or something, but it was just another disappointment. The village had also recently learned that the middle school would not be rebuilt at all. It would instead be joined with a school in the neighboring town of Wisner. "It's moving slowly, but it's moving forward."

And a testament to its resiliency, the village of Pilger adopted a new motto, the town too tough to die. And to prove it, just one month after the tornado, on July 19, 2014, Pilger held its annual Pilger Days Festival. It featured a barbecue, mud volleyball, and other fun in the sun. Everyone came together for mud volleyball, a barbecue, and the big event. Sheriff Mike Unger getting tased. Oh, s***.

It was nice to restore some normalcy, and before long the village was showing progress in other ways. In August 2014, Kim Nyman and her husband were the first to rebuild in Pilger. A 1500 square foot, three bedroom manufactured home was placed on the lot where their previous house stood. It adhered to all of the new floodplain guidelines. Kim wanted to set an example that it could be done and lift everyone's spirits.

I'm here for a reason, she told the Omaha World Herald. We're just going to keep moving forward and re-envisioning how Pilger will look.

People took her cue. There are signs of progress, like the construction of the new Pilger Co-op headquarters. Nyman's home was the first to go up after the twister. The Lutheran Church pastor moves into the second new home here Friday. Even Candy Murphree eventually rebuilt in Pilger, thanks to funds raised from a Bret Michaels charity concert. Nobody expected me to be back. I mean, not just be alive, but nobody expected me to rebuild here.

Construction continued throughout the year. By November 2014, the farmers' co-op had rebuilt seven of its grain bins, which was a huge boost to the village.

The co-op was Pilger's largest employer and revenue source, and fortunately, it looked like that relationship would continue. But we, the co-op has rebuilt so many of their grain bins and their buildings, and they're continuing to build more. Our bank, Midwest Bank, broke ground last Friday, and we're so excited about that because we haven't had a bank in town, so...

And we've got a restaurant in the works, we've got a convenience store in the works, and a community center in the works. Things were looking up. By the one-year anniversary of the disaster, that convenience store was reopened on First Street, now called Pilger Pride. A new city hall had been constructed at its previous address on Main Street, a block away from the bank, which had also been rebuilt.

St. John's Lutheran Church was under construction for a second time. A violent windstorm had wiped out the initial rebuild, a sign that I don't think I personally would be willing to ignore, but the people of Pilger are tough, and they persevered. "People ask me how I'm doing this, and I don't have a big answer," Kilm Nyman told the World Herald. "God gave me the strength.

He put me in Pilger 19 years ago because he knew I could deal with this. I've been handling this and I will keep on handling it. I still deal with a tornado every day. It hasn't been a piece of cake, but it hasn't been something I couldn't handle.

We're not going anywhere. We are tough people. We've made it a year. We're proud of making it a year and of what we've accomplished in a year. But we knew from the beginning that we were too tough to die and Pilgrim wasn't going away. We were hearing lots of stories, well, that town's never going to survive. It was so small. It was only 352 people. Well, we're back up to 197 and we're excited about it.

Pilger's recovery had been remarkable, and Kim Nyman's leadership did not go unnoticed. In 2015, she was named Nebraska's Outstanding Public Administrator of the Year and won the Lieutenant Governor's Be Prepared Award.

well-deserved, according to everybody. I'm hardly ever speechless, as people have seen over the past several months. But it really means a lot that an organization like this has recognized the kind of work that I'm doing, even in Pilger, which is very small, and it really means a lot to me to get this. Kim Nyman took great pride in her job and continued to do so in the following years as Pilger rebuilt and reinvented itself.

That's what makes the next chapter of this story so peculiar. As usual, it all starts with an audit. A routine annual audit of the Village of Pilgrims books in November 2018, performed by Morrow Davies and Toelle P.C., the CPA firm based in Norfolk, Nebraska, typically tasked with the job. It was during this audit when CPA Diane Davies found what could be described as "spending irregularities."

Dozens of invoices paid by Kim Nyman that had not been approved by Pilger's village board as required. Davies flagged these payments for Nyman, who explained herself to Amber Labins, the chairperson of the board, in an email dated November 30th, 2018. Nyman wrote,

She pointed out that I had not placed several items on the bill listing or the manual checklist for the board to approve at a meeting. Some were small items, some were items from the tornado rebuild, and some were settlement payoffs for things that happened during the tornado time that were weird.

Diane said that I didn't need to go back and make a list of them for the board since they were double signed by either you or Corey, the fire chief and co-chair. And none of the funds were funneled to me. I just need to be more detail oriented. I told her I would bring it up at the December meeting that I had neglected to list some of the bills, big and small on the listing. Just wanted you to know that I screwed up. And if you wanted to give me a verbal warning or write me up, that would be just fine. Sorry. Kimberly Nyman, Village of Pilger.

So she got a little sloppy. Hard to hold that against a woman with a thousand jobs. However, at that closed village board meeting in December, Kimberly Nyman reportedly admitted to the other Pilger officials that she was actually, in fact, being scammed. And she was scared. And she didn't know what to do. She said she was making payments for advertising and other unknown services out of fear of being sued. And she hadn't told anybody.

The board encouraged her to file a consumer complaint form with the Consumer Protection Division of the Nebraska Attorney General's Office. So that's what Kilm Nyman did. And here's what she wrote:

Received invoices. Did not remember ordering anything. They told me I had. Didn't know what to do, so paid them. A municipality doesn't need advertising. A lot of stuff went on since Pilger's tornadoes, so I wasn't sure what had happened. Our village auditor suggested I contact your office.

A week later, on December 19th, 2018, Kiln-Nyman filed another report, this time a property loss claim of $194,065.80 with the League Association of Risk Management. In it, she expanded on her story, quote, Received invoices. Did not order advertising. They said they had me on tape saying yes to ordered. Didn't know what to do, so paid them.

All checks were double signed and none of the amounts paid were to any village employee relatives or board member relatives. A lot of stuff has happened since the tornado so I wasn't sure what had happened. If payment wasn't sent out, would receive phone calls telling me that the village and/or I would be sued if the payments were not made. Was offered lower settlement amounts to pay to take care of the multiple invoices. Still receiving bills from multiple companies.

Kim Nyman willingly signed a written acknowledgement that she had violated the Village of Pilger's personnel policy for inefficiency, incompetence, or negligence in the performance of duties and for careless, negligent, abusive, improper, or unauthorized use of the village's property, equipment, or funds.

On January 7, 2019, the Nebraska Auditor of Public Accounts was tasked by the Attorney General's Office to investigate this mishandling of public funds. A deep audit would take several months to complete. In the meantime, Kilm Nyman was placed on investigative suspension with pay. That deep audit would eventually reveal that hundreds of thousands of dollars were missing, and that Kilm Nyman was almost certainly aware.

and soon the entire village of Pilger would be made aware. And it would come as a shock. How could the most admired and responsible person in town be taken by a crook? Who was this mastermind? The following is a paid advertisement for the Swindle Valued Listener Rewards Program.

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I'm the one who travels first class around the world and you don't.

Gavin Avento was on the other side of the world when the tornadoes flattened Pilger in June 2014. That year the 45-year-old self-employed Canadian national bounced around from India to Thailand to Japan back to India.

Judging by the publicly available amateur video footage of his travels, Gavin was the ugliest of tourists and excessively crude. Let that previous statement serve as a warning for what's to come. This is my last day in India. My last day. And might I say, it's a fucking nice place with the people here. There's a lot of fucking assholes in this country.

And they're jealous of anybody from the West because you have things that they only think that they can fucking have or think that they deserve. But they can get it, but they just don't want it. But then they complain because they don't have it. So whatever.

By September 2014, Gavin Avento landed in Cambodia. He spent his time getting drunk and being obnoxious. Hey sexy girl, if I was the king would you let me have boom boom? Hey? He filmed himself swimming in the ocean, shooting guns and flexing his muscles on every reflective surface he encountered. Truly living the dream. No, no, no, no, no.

I wish all my friends and my mom and my brother can be with me right now. I hope you have the time of your life. Only the things that we dreamed about or saw on TV when we were younger is what I'm living right now. Gavin was riding motorcycles, buying motorcycles, the fastest, coolest, most neatest motorcycle ever, buying cars. Check out what I just bought.

renting mansions. It's a mansion. Six bedrooms. He filmed himself counting stacks of cash. Cash that he earned legitimately, of course, while working remotely. I'm working.

When he was off the clock, Gavin Avento managed to meet and fall in love with a bashful Cambodian woman named Pauv. She started showing up in Gavin's videos along with her young daughter. He happily brought them along on his journeys. Gavin Avento and Pauv were married sometime in 2016. Oh, by the way, she's 30 years old. No one's going to believe it, but when my friends see the video, they're going to say she's probably like 15 years old. You're not fat like my other girlfriend.

Gabinavinto documented his travels and uploaded the videos to YouTube to share with his son back home in Canada. Sometimes, in between the persistent coughing, hiccuping, burping and chain smoking, the shark-tooth necklace wearing bloated day drunk would

would send life advice back home to his son. You see Vincent, there's no fat women here. All sexy women, no fat biatches. You're old enough to know the difference of fat women are disgusting. And they have attitude problems because they're fat and they like welfare. So you gotta come check out this part of the world Vince because you'll find a really nice chick when you're a good looking kid so they'll be all over you in two seconds.

And please don't go out with a fat chick. Nothing worse than a fat chick with an attitude. You know? Especially when they're on welfare. Trying to make everyone believe they're trying hard in life but yet they sit around eating fucking chips all day long and watch TV. Have shit jobs and they're just fucking losers. Just telling my son there's no fat women here. All the women are beautiful in Asia. They're not fat pigs like in Canada. And I'm not saying any of this because of your mother or anything.

Gavin Avento was a walking, talking buffoon with the tattoos and goatee to match a fucking real-life cartoon. Singapore. Giggity-go. Giggity. Giggity. Good old Singapore. Giggity-giggity-giggity. Giggity. Giggity-giggity-go. Giggity. Giggity. Giggity.

This brainiac and former felon was also a business owner. Gavin Mark Avento owned a collection agency named North American GME Collection.

Strangely enough, the North American GME Collection Agency was the single largest recipient of payments from Pilger, Nebraska. More than $233,000 over five years. And Gavin Avento was not the only one. The auditor's report notes 282 checks drawn from the village bank total more than $560,000 and appear to be related to an alleged scam or fraud.

The report also questions more than $156,000 in village credit card charges. By March 2019, a state audit found that Kimberly Nyman sent a total of $718,000 in checks and credit card transactions to 80 different vendors determined to be possible scammers. Only four of 282 checks were submitted by Nyman to the Pilger board for approval. How is that even possible?

Well, Amber Labins, Pilger's chairman of the board, admitted to the Nebraska Auditor of Public Accounts that she would readily sign every check presented to her by Kimberly Nyman, even if they were blank.

According to the audit report, quote, It is unclear why Ms. Nyman did not notify the board years ago that she was truly being scammed. It is clear she was intentionally leaving those vendors off the approved and published claims listings. This gives rise to concerns regarding possible official misconduct.

And the tornado was no excuse, as Kim Nyman had alluded to in her report to the Attorney General's office. Pilger's funds started disappearing in 2006, eight years before the tornado. But in the years after, as donations and relief funds poured in, the frequency and amounts of the questionable transactions certainly increased from $42,000 in 2014 to more than $240,000 in 2018.

The state auditors were skeptical of Kilniman's faulty memory. How does the village treasurer spend almost three-quarters of a million dollars on a service or product that she quote, "did not remember ordering"? Pilger's annual budget is only one million dollars. Relatively speaking, these expenditures were significant.

It is difficult to believe that Ms. Nyman could not recall having made any of the purchases at issue literally hundreds of times, the audit report stated. Even if there were any doubt, the logical course of action would have been to notify law enforcement or the village board of the dilemma.

Next, the auditors tried to determine where were the checks physically sent. The addresses on the invoices paid by Nyman led to UPS stores, FedEx mailrooms, saving ships, P.O. boxes, apartment buildings, and even a vape shop.

vendors in New York, Connecticut, Quebec, Minnesota, and more. Vendors with generic names such as Great Solutions, Publication Internet, Global Internet Publishing, National Business, Intermedia Marketing, and of course, North American Division, GME. What was the connection to Gavin Avento specifically?

The local media and law enforcement wondered if Gavin was Kim Nyman's former husband or maybe a friend of Kim's current husband. Maybe they had been associated with the Vento when they lived in Tennessee, where Kim admitted during a 2004 deposition that she had been accused of stealing from an employer.

News Channel Nebraska's Joe Jordan wrote about the mysterious man and his connection to the Nymans and, surprisingly, he received an email from Gavin Avento in which Gavin denied being Kilm's former lover. Quote, Never met her before. Thank God. In fact, Gavin continued, Kilm Nyman and the publicity the scandal had received, quote, ruined my name, business, and financially crippled me, and he wanted to be compensated for it.

by the media and the Stanton County Sheriff's Office investigating the case. Or else, Gavin threatened, he would sue them. "Sue us for what? Doing our job?" Sheriff Mike Unger said, relaying his response to the Flatwater Free Press. "The Ventos declined any of our requests to come back to the United States to be interviewed. For him to sue us, he would have to come back, so I don't foresee that happening."

Coincidentally, or maybe not, Kim Nyman had recently tweaked her explanation, adding that the mysterious vendors had threatened her if she did not pay the invoices. They had threatened me and my family, so I paid them with village funds, she told a village lawyer. Who were they? Nyman couldn't say. Emails uncovered by the Nebraska Auditor of Public Accounts failed to shed any additional light on a motive or a kickback scheme or anything like that.

Back in January 2015, Gavin Avento wrote to Pilger's official government cable1.net email account, wondering about an unpaid invoice. Happy New Year, Kim. It's Gavin from North American Division GME Collections. I am just contacting you concerning the outstanding invoice for $7,731.18.

You asked me to contact you January 15th-ish. Just need to know what time frame we are looking at to receive payment. If you can tell me, it would be helpful. And it was signed Gavin Hill, an alias of Aventos, director of NAD GME Collections. Kim Nyman responded, We are in the works of trying to get a FEMA community disaster loan. It will take a couple of months, so it is difficult to give you dates right now.

Gavin followed up a month later. Kim told him they were still waiting. Gavin sent another email a few weeks later. The back and forth continued until mid-March, until Nyman wrote that she'd be discussing the payment with the board, which she never did, before finally sending a check to Gavin on March 11th, 2015.

Avento receiving at least half a dozen $8,000 checks from the village of Pilger and Kimberly Nyman, plus one check for over $19,000. All told, prosecutors note 21 checks to Avento between 2013 and 2018, totaling $231,000. In February 2019, Kimberly Nyman was fired from her position as Pilger's village clerk, a position that she had held for 20 years.

Less than a year later, on January 9th, 2020, she was arrested by the Stanton County Sheriff's Office with whom she once stood shoulder to shoulder picking up the pieces of their village.

The affidavit states that Nyman was under suspicion of operating two financial schemes. One, using unauthorized funds to pay off threats. And two, being involved in some kind of kickback scheme. Seven felony theft counts, yes. You have some official misconduct as well as abuse of power, which are misdemeanors. In total, Kimberly Nyman was charged with 17 criminal acts, seven felony theft counts, three misdemeanor counts of official misconduct,

and seven misdemeanor counts of abuse of public records. If convicted, Kelm Nyman faced up to 187 years in prison.

Pilgrim, Nebraska proved to be too tough to die even after twin tornadoes devastated the village in 2014. Well now a woman who helped the community heal is charged with stealing from it more than $700,000. 57-year-old Kimberly Nyman faces seven felony counts of theft by unlawful taking and three counts of abuse of public records. I don't know what to say about it. It's just shocking, that's all.

Pilger could have used a lot of that money. Kimberly Nyman's trial was scheduled for spring 2020. The village of Pilger was anxiously waiting in hopes that the who, what's, why's, and how's would be answered in the courtroom.

Unfortunately, Nyman's case, involving international money transactions, proved too large and too complicated for the Stanton County Sheriff's Office to handle on its own, and a request for assistance from the State Attorney General and the FBI went unanswered. Ultimately, the small sheriff's department was unable to trace any of the missing funds back to Kim Nyman. The prosecution had no choice but to cut her a deal.

On March 10th, 2020, Kim Nyman pleaded guilty to one count of attempted theft. Instead of facing 187 years in prison, Nyman now faced a maximum sentence of three years.

The case was hanging by the thread, the prosecuting attorney told the Norfolk Daily Press. Investigators were unable to prove that Kim Nyman benefited from the unapproved spending, so the plea was accepted. Still, at our sentencing hearing, Stanton County District Judge James G. Kuby remained perplexed by it all. I've read a lot of information about all of this, all the reports, everything. I don't get it.

I feel kind of dense, you know, that I don't really understand this. So, Kilm Nyman tried to explain. I admit I did things that were wrong. But I guess I got to a point where I didn't know how to stop it, and I was hoping somebody else would find it. Did you bring it to their attention, anybody, and say, "This is a problem. I don't know what to do. Can you help me with this?" No, sir, I didn't. The bills were paid to Gavin Pivento.

Personally. Why did you do that? To pay to an individual when the company is asking for payment? I can't remember all the invoices I've seen. It's just hard for me to understand why you would do something like this without having some kind of benefit. Were you blackmailed?

No, it was just threatened. They told me they would come after the village, they would come after me, they would come after my family. We will sue you personally? Yeah. Did you go to the city attorney or the county attorney or to any attorney and say, can I be held liable for not paying a bill in my professional capacity as village clerk? Did you ask that question? No. Why not? I don't know. I don't either.

To lighten his client's sentence, Nyman's attorney, Sean Brennan, reminded Judge Kuby that she was not a violent offender and posed very little threat to public safety. Judge Kuby disagreed. I would disagree with that. You may not be a violent person. You may not have any prior criminal history.

But you did some damage to the public here. It will be the judgment and sentence of this court that on the conviction of attempted theft, Class 3A felony, that should be sentenced to a determinate term of three years to be served in the Department of Correctional Services. On February 1st, 2021, 58-year-old Kimberly Nyman was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay $44,381 in restitution.

She has since been released, but while behind bars, Nyman wrote a letter to the Pilger Fire Department asking for her old volunteer job back. Fire Chief Corey Colmos told News Channel Nebraska that the request will be considered. The resolution of the Kim Nyman case offered very little closure to Pilgerites. Not only did Nyman's plea deal place the village's fraud insurance claim in peril, but so many questions remain unanswered. Rumors and speculation persisted.

Natalia Alamdari interviewed many of the villagers for her article in the Flatwater Free Press. Some believed Nyman was blackmailed or had a co-conspirator at Pilger City Hall. Others believed that Kim Nyman did nothing wrong. If only there was someone out there who could shed light on this whole thing. Sound like getting drunk.

Hey, Renee. This is the public's first look at Gavin Avento, the mystery man linked to the puzzling theft case and scandal surrounding fired Pilgrim Village clerk Kimberly Nyman. So far, Gavin Mark Avento has not been charged with any crimes related to the missing Pilgrim money.

But, as demonstrated earlier, he is very well aware that he is connected. In fact, Gavin Avento posted comments in response to a March 2020 Joe Jordan article on the News Channel Nebraska website about a year after it was published. The comments follow the adopted guidelines for most comments you find on local news articles, so I've done my best to edit them for brevity and legibility.

Gavin Markavinto writes, "Thank you for reporting this story. This situation has destroyed me financially and has cost me to also lose my wife in Cambodia. She thinks that I am a criminal and thief due to this. It has been very hard to even survive. Also the deserved compensation I am asking for is not 1 million. It is 29,500 per month since December 2018 till now that I lost in company revenue.

plus $1 million for slander and other legal terms. Two and a half years later, Gavin Avento returned to that article with additional information and updated demands. I'm going to do my best to read it as it was written. "This is Gavin Avento. Why don't you give me money for this false report? And this is what my ex-wife did to me in Cambodia and lied about loving me and then stole all from me and then tried to kill me six times.

Like this photo from the police in Cambodia gave to me and my ex was doing this because she was doing this for scammers with the Crips gang that saw her in Cambodia and then when she left tried to kill me. You made these false reports and destroyed my business collections company with your lies. So where are your penalties for lying about me? I'm being constantly victimized by people like you and you never verified anything that was said about me. You just said it and that ruined my life and family because of you.

Ex-lying wife scammer who gave the info to the Crips gang in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and then scammed many customers like Kim Niemann's and then tried to make it look like it was me. Like you people, bad reporters did not look at this photo. This is what I looked like in February 14th, 2022. This was my ex-wife's Valentine's Day gift to me. It's on my Facebook, Gavin Avento.

Just look at the one with Harley Davidson in the round photo. That's my bike that she also destroyed and also my Bentley Continental that she stole and sold with these scammers. Now you helped them to make up a fake story and I want money for this.

I said before $1 million and then after I saw the fake slandering lying report your news did without verifying any of it, I want $52 billion million for your slanderous lies and fake degrading news. Look at my Facebook. I will put the attempted murder pictures on my main page. You'll see." Within days, another update was posted in the comments of that story.

This is Gavin Avento, and I just put the attempted murder photos on my Facebook, Gavin Avento. And it had my Harley photo in a small round circle. And at the big photo you can see my photograph of me with a face photo sitting in front of a cafe. Found it. But it wasn't easy. This man has at least a dozen Facebook accounts. There are a slew of posts. Make sense of these what you will.

On April 16th, 2023, Gavin posted the promised photo he was describing. There he is, unmistakably, unconscious, arm tucked underneath his body, lying in the street. I'm not dead, the caption begins, a relief to everybody knowing there's no Facebook in the afterlife. I was run over and maybe the same pigs that are forcing my ex, and did, which I think was supposed to read kid, into sex labor in Montreal. I was took there and saw them.

and maybe someone lied to them just to have them believe I was dead and take them to the funeral and then kidnap them into forced sex labor. I'm trying to stop it and save them." And then Evento commented under that post, "This is for the village of Pilgit, Nebraska. As I said on your Facebook message, this being done because of your fake and birtful news report.

Other posts on Mark Avento's Facebook from May 2023 allude to the fact that he has returned to Montreal and is now homeless. "Miss my Harley Chopper," he writes. "I miss my car and the lovely look that people give when I am driving it. I miss you and hope you and your daughter are safe and thinking of me with love in your heart. You are not doing bad and I wish you thinking of the great times we had as a family. Sad Giggity."

More recently, Gavin Avento's outrageous claims seem to have amplified. In February 2024, he posted photos with the ambassador of Cambodia attached to an assertion that he, Gavin Avento, was supposed to be the deputy ambassador from Canada to Cambodia but, quote, got tortured instead for nine and a half years by terrorists. Gavin says they tried to kill him six times and then he became a member of a motorcycle gang.

All of this because he was framed for what happened in Pilger, Nebraska. Quote,

And the television report tried to blame me. And that's when I found out. And the people that were to blame almost had me locked up in the United States of America for 187 years.

But the FBI found out that I was not to blame because they never charged me with anything. And they put the treasurer in jail for insurance fraud because she was the person who did that and tried to blame me for her crimes. But now I want to sue them because they played with my life and helped my wife to treat me bad because they told her I was going to jail. And also I lost $5,805,000 and I want my money back that they got my wife to destroy me with.

I will try to contact the reporters and also the media and the FBI because I am entitled to $52 million. My collections company had every right to collect the money that the township owed the creditors and now they owe me a lot and I'm getting a lawyer to sue them for destroying my life for four years on TV because they wanted to find a scapegoat that was out of the country.

So, we will see soon if it works, and justice is served for Gavin Avento, diplomat from Canada to Cambodia. End quote. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, a.k.a. The Former, a.k.a. Scapegoat.

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Hello, my name is Richard Fisher from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Hello, my name is Gina from St. Paul, Minnesota. Hello, my name is Kevin from Auckland, New Zealand. And I am a concerned citizen and a valued listener. And as someone who lives in the future, I can tell you, we're all doomed.

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