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Siebert’s involvement came to light through a recorded conversation with an inmate at the prison
Julie Carr SmythMonday 24 November 2025 18:55 GMT
CloseJD Vance wrote the memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ about his childhood
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A man has been sentenced to more than a decade in prison after using JD Vance’s acclaimed memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," to smuggle narcotics into an Ohio correctional facility.
The book, which famously explores the devastating impact of drug addiction on Vance’s family and wider Appalachian culture, was one of three items sprayed with drugs and shipped to Grafton Correctional Institution.
Austin Siebert, 30, from Maumee, southwest of Toledo, was convicted of the scheme, which involved disguising the packages as Amazon orders. Alongside Vance’s New York Times bestseller, a 2019 GRE Handbook and a separate piece of paper were also used in the illicit operation, according to court documents.
On November 18, US District Judge Donald C. Nugent handed Siebert a prison sentence exceeding ten years for his role in the drug trafficking plot.
Siebert’s involvement came to light through a recorded conversation with an inmate at the prison, during which the shipment was discussed. The exchange revealed Siebert’s apparent unawareness or disregard for the central themes of the book he was exploiting.
"Is it Hillbilly?" the inmate inquired.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about," Siebert initially replied, before recalling: "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the book, the book I’m reading. (Expletive) romance novel."
The vice president’s best-selling memoir that came out in 2016.
Vance’s book already had sold more than 3 million copies before Trump chose him for the Republican ticket.
“Hillbilly Elegy,” which Ron Howard adapted into a feature film released in 2020, tells of Vance’s childhood in Ohio and his family’s roots in rural Kentucky. After Trump’s stunning victory in 2016, the book was widely cited as essential reading for Trump opponents trying to understand his appeal to working class whites, even as some critics faulted it at as a narrow and misleading portrait of Appalachia and of poverty in the U.S.
