We definitely cannot say that influencers are liars. They are selling products for a paycheck like every marketing department did before social media. Danielle Miller was selling. Or so we thought. With 34,000 followers it appears that she was selling a life that the “Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous” would be jealous of. But the article in the February 2022 New York Magazine issue that quotes Danielle Miller as saying “Honestly, I more so consider myself a con artist than anything,” was maybe more truth from Miller than not. Because Miller’s “success” on Instagram was really funded with more than $1 million in fraudulent COVID-19 loans.
From July 2020 through May 2021, Miller executed a scheme to fraudulently obtain COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan funds and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance using the personal identifying information of more than ten individuals and used fake business names in the applications. It was not a cheap life that Miller sold on Instagram, and someone had to fund it. Why not the U.S. taxpayer?
Miller posted her extravagant use of the fraudulent proceeds and stolen identities, publicizing her purchasing of luxury goods and renting of luxury accommodations. Social media posts included Miller at luxury hotels in California where transactions were made using the bank account in one of the victims’ names. Additionally, Miller possessed counterfeit driver’s licenses in the victims’ names but bearing her photograph. And she went for the high life with it…literally. In August 2020, using a counterfeit driver’s license in the name of a Massachusetts victim, Miller arranged a Gulfstream private jet charter flight from Florida to California where she stayed at a luxury hotel under the same victim’s name.
On March 6, 2023, Miller pleaded guilty in the Massachusetts U.S. District Court of fraud. Sentencing will be June 27, 2023. But no rush. She will be down in Florida to start her sentencing for another fraud case.
Great job by the Homeland Security’s Investigation’s Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force.
Today’s Fraud Of The Day is based on article “Instagram influencer Danielle Miller pleads guilty to $1M COVID loan fraud” published by the New York Post on March 6, 2023
An Instagram influencer — and self-proclaimed “con artist” — flaunted her way to a federal guilty plea. Native New Yorker Danielle Miller, 32, admitted Monday the luxurious lifestyle she bragged about on TikTok and Instagram was funded with more than $1 million in stolen COVID-relief loans, federal prosecutors said.
Miller pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $1.5 million in government funds by swiping the identities of more than 10 people, according to the the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.
