Brian DePeña, the 61-year-old mayor of Lawrence, Massachusetts, was arrested on Friday on wire fraud charges for allegedly stealing more than $1.5 million in pandemic relief funds. When reporters approached him outside the courthouse, his attorney Carlos Apostle offered a two-part statement that has since gone massively viral.

"He doesn't speak English. No comment."

DePeña — a sitting American mayor, elected in November 2021 and re-elected in November 2025 — could only manage three words for the cameras: "God bless you." Then his vehicle hit a parked car while leaving.

The charges stem from Economic Injury Disaster Loans, or EIDL funds, administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration under the CARES Act. DePeña allegedly applied for the money to help his business, Tenares Tire Services Inc. — a tire shop. Instead, prosecutors say he funneled the pandemic relief money into his mayoral campaign and used it to pay off personal debts.

U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley laid it out plainly: "Mayor DePeña was elected to be a leader for the City of Lawrence. He was looked up to and trusted by his constituents, but he betrayed that trust through his alleged corruption and lies."

If convicted on the wire fraud charges, DePeña faces up to 30 years in prison.

DePeña was born in the Dominican Republic, came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant, and later became a U.S. citizen. He served on the Lawrence City Council from 2016 to 2021 before winning the mayor's office. So he's held elected office in America for a decade. And his own attorney's defense opener is that the man can't speak the language.

The clip has racked up over a million views on X, with the obvious question bouncing around: how does someone who cannot communicate in English get elected mayor of an American city — twice — and then allegedly redirect $1.5 million in federal disaster relief without anyone noticing until the handcuffs come out?

Lawrence isn't exactly an obscure town. It's a city of roughly 89,000 people in Essex County, Massachusetts. It has a city council, a budget process, oversight mechanisms. Every one of those systems watched DePeña win two elections and apparently never flagged the most basic question about whether their mayor could conduct city business in the country's dominant language.

The "doesn't speak English" line is doing heavy lifting here. It's simultaneously a legal shield — suggesting DePeña can't answer press questions — and an accidental admission that raises more questions than it deflects. You don't need to speak English to commit wire fraud. But you'd think someone might have mentioned the language barrier before he was running a city.

COVID relief fraud has become its own industry at this point. The CARES Act moved trillions of dollars with minimal oversight, and prosecutors across the country are still unwinding the damage. DePeña's case is just one thread. But most of the other threads don't come with a viral clip of an elected official's lawyer explaining that the mayor of an American city can't talk to his own constituents.

Tire shop to city hall to federal courthouse. The American Dream, Lawrence edition.