A Miami-based social media influencer was sentenced to five years in jail for fraudulently securing over $1 million in COVID-19-related loans to finance her lavish lifestyle, according to federal prosecutors.
Danielle Miller, 32, was also given a three-year supervised release and ordered to pay restitution to be determined later, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts said in a statement on Sept. 7.
Ms. Miller pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft in March. She was accused of stealing the identities of over 10 individuals to obtain pandemic-related loans.
Ms. Miller, who had more than 34,000 followers on Instagram, then used those funds for her personal expenses, including chartering a private jet and renting a luxury apartment.
On her Instagram account, she flaunted her luxury shopping and lavish hotel stays, including a post showing her at luxury hotels in California where she used a bank account from one of the victims.
“Ms. Miller isn’t an influencer, she is a convicted felon. She stole the identities of innocent people to steal over $1.2 million in pandemic-relief loans that should have gone to people in need,” Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said.
“Today’s sentencing should make it crystal clear that curating a high-society social media presence on the backs of hardworking taxpayers is a path to prison, not fleeting fame,” he added.
According to the statement, Ms. Miller “devised and executed a scheme” between July 2020 and May 2021 to obtain pandemic-related relief loans through the Small Business Administration and the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.
Federal prosecutors said that Ms. Miller used fake business names to apply for government benefits. She also had counterfeit driver’s licenses in the victims’ names but bearing her photograph.
371 People Charged in COVID-19 Relief Fraud
Last month, the Department of Justice launched two new COVID-19 fraud strike forces and said that it had charged 371 people for offenses related to over $836 million in alleged COVID-19 fraud.According to the DOJ, criminal charges were filed against 371 defendants and 119 defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial. More than $57 million in court-ordered restitution was imposed.
“The Justice Department has now seized over $1.4 billion in COVID-19 relief funds that criminals had stolen, and charged over 3,000 defendants with crimes in federal districts across the country,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
The charges are the result of a COVID-19 fraud enforcement sweep that took place nationwide from May through the end of July, involving 718 law enforcement actions, including criminal charges, civil charges, forfeitures, guilty pleas, and sentencing.
Many cases involved charges related to pandemic unemployment insurance benefit fraud and fraud against the Small Business Administration’s two largest pandemic programs: the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans.
A new analysis of COVID-19 relief spending released by The Associated Press revealed that 10 percent of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has disbursed in COVID-19 relief aid may have been lost to fraud and waste.
The analysis, published in June, estimates that fraudsters collected more than $283 billion, while another $120 billion was wasted or misspent.
