{"id":24877,"date":"2023-03-07T17:58:17","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T22:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=24877"},"modified":"2023-03-07T17:58:17","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T22:58:17","slug":"danielle-miller-social-media-influencer-con-artist-pleads-guilty-to-1m-us-pandemic-loan-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2023\/03\/07\/danielle-miller-social-media-influencer-con-artist-pleads-guilty-to-1m-us-pandemic-loan-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Danielle Miller: Social media influencer ‘con artist’ pleads guilty to $1m US pandemic loan fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

A social media influencer has pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining more than $1m in COVID-19 pandemic-related loans from the US government used to fund a lavish lifestyle which she flaunted on Instagram.<\/p>\n

Danielle Miller, a self-proclaimed con artist whose scams have been chronicled in a New York Magazine profile last year, appeared before a general judge in Boston by video from a prison cell to plead guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges.<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old also agreed to forfeit $1.3m (\u00a31m) as part of a plea deal with prosecutors and serve six years in prison, 16 months of which could overlap with a five-year sentence she was handed in October in a separate Florida bank fraud case.<\/p>\n

Miller has been accused by prosecutors of using the identities of more than 10 people to fraudulently set up bank accounts and obtain more than $1m (\u00a3831,450) in pandemic-related loans intended for small businesses.<\/p>\n

She is said to have spent the money on travel and luxury items including a Rolex, a Louis Vuitton bag and Dior shoes, as well as posting photos on Instagram of herself at opulent hotels in California where she used a bank account in the name of one of her victims.<\/p>\n

Miller, originally from New York, is the daughter of a former New York State Bar Association president and was also a student at the prestigious Horace Mann School.<\/p>\n

She was already facing charges in a separate Florida state court fraud case when she was arrested in May 2021 at a luxury apartment in Miami, which she had moved into during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

“Honestly, I more so consider myself a con artist than anything,” Miller was quoted as saying in the\u00a0New York Magazine<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0article.<\/p>\n

“You know how they have that saying that you can sell ice to an Eskimo? If there’s something that I want, I’m getting it.”<\/p>\n

More than 1,000 people have been convicted of defrauding COVID relief programmes, according to the US Government Accountability Office.<\/p>\n

Miller’s case is an example of fraud that became rampant as the federal government rushed to distribute more than $5trn (\u00a34.1trn) in relief funds to help people, businesses and local governments affected by the pandemic due to lockdowns and closures.<\/p>\n

Last week, the White House said President Joe Biden was planning to ask Congress to provide $1.6bn (\u00a31.3bn) in new funding to crack down on fraud tied to programmes.<\/p>\n

Miller is due to be sentenced on 27 June.<\/p>\n

Source: \u00a0\"Sky<\/a> news.sky.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A social media influencer has pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining more than $1m in COVID-19 pandemic-related loans from the US government used to fund a lavish lifestyle which she flaunted on Instagram. Danielle Miller, a […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[4554,565,177,417,6057],"class_list":{"0":"post-24877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-bank-fraud","10":"tag-boston","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-florida","13":"tag-miami","14":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24877"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24880,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24877\/revisions\/24880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}