Join us to hear about Danielle Miller, an “Instagram Influencer” who is also a habitual Covid loan fraudster. This is eCrimeBytes.com Season 2 Episode 11 Act 4: Instagram Influencer Danielle Miller’s $1M Covid Loan Fraud – Act 4: Punishment.
Please check out our prior acts for the background:
Instagram Influencer Danielle Miller’s $1M Covid Loan Fraud – Act 1: Meet The Victims
Instagram Influencer Danielle Miller’s $1M Covid Loan Fraud – Act 2: There Is A Post For That
Instagram Influencer Danielle Miller’s $1M Covid Loan Fraud – Act 3: Miller Is Caught
Sources:
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/social-media-influencer-sentenced-five-years-prison-15-million-covid-19-relief-fraud
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59896759/united-states-v-miller/
- https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellenicolemiller/
- https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/instagram-influencer-sentenced-5-years-prison-using-stolen-identities-rcna103926
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60087350/united-states-v-miller/
Transcript:
00:00:10:00 – 00:00:21:27
Keith
Hey, welcome back to eCrimeBytes. This is season two, episode 11, and this is Act four of Danielle Miller and her COVID loan fraud spree.
00:00:21:29 – 00:00:36:02
Keith
Now, it’s really hard at this point to catch you up with everything. I will do my best, but I will put a link here for our YouTube watchers so that way you can go back to Act one if you haven’t watched it yet.
00:00:36:02 – 00:00:42:24
Keith
I do recommend doing that because there’s a lot of details, but the minimum information you need to know is Danielle Miller is the criminal here.
00:00:42:26 – 00:01:20:01
Keith
She applied for these Small Business Administration loans through victim names and got about one point two – $1.3 million worth of fraudulent loans in the COVID era. And she was high roller and she was on jets and out Beverly Hills, California, in front of Rolls Royce and Birkin handbags. But eventually she was caught basically through Instagram posts and computer IP addresses and she pled guilty on March six of 2023.
00:01:20:01 – 00:01:25:23
Keith
And that’s where we last left her hanging. And now we’re going to introduce what it is that is her punishment.
00:01:25:23 – 00:01:42:10
Keith
So we get to September 11th of 2023, and this is not even a month ago from recording. And if you didn’t catch us in our last act, I said one of the weird things was she pled guilty to everything she was charged for, which doesn’t typically happen in
00:01:42:13 – 00:02:04:03
Keith
the research that I go through. And here’s another thing. In the sentencing, the defense says, hey, we want sixty months total. We want not only that, but they said we want to run concurrent with her Florida five year sentence. So I went, Holy shit, she’s in trouble for five years in Florida. And something else didn’t even see that as paperwork.
00:02:04:05 – 00:02:28:29
Keith
But then the prosecution comes back and says, Hey, we also want sixty months total. The well, the defense and the prosecution agree that sixty months total, this is also a very odd case. You don’t typically the defense is like we want probation. But they were starting a five years and they agreed to plead guilty to everything. So who knows the reason behind that.
00:02:29:01 – 00:03:03:02
Keith
Now, when I was going through the whole sentencing hearing and the documents they submit in support of this, they highlight some things in her life as mitigating or aggravating circumstances, meaning something that you should give her leniency for or something you should give her a harsher sentence for. This is pretty interesting. So the government listed her having a quote unquote, unusually privileged upbringing as one of those reasons why you should give her a harsher sentence.
00:03:03:02 – 00:03:30:04
Keith
Because basically they’re saying, you know, her life wasn’t hard. So there was real there’s no real reason economically she had to go out and do this kind of thing because she was afforded more material advantages in life than the average person out there, and especially the average criminal defendant out there. But on the flip side, they say she suffered from extreme trauma in her childhood.
00:03:30:04 – 00:03:32:26
Keith
So you got to give her some leniency on that one.
00:03:32:26 – 00:03:49:13
Keith
And then they came back and they said that she had some significant health issues that impacted her time in custody. They didn’t say it was like physical or mental or anything like that, but that was one of these other things that they put into that list.
00:03:49:13 – 00:03:50:00
Keith
Now,
00:03:50:00 – 00:03:55:20
Keith
going down this little punch list that they had of reasons why she get more and get less time.
00:03:55:23 – 00:04:00:03
Keith
I stopped at this one spot where the government says, you know,
00:04:00:03 – 00:04:23:08
Keith
she had this record committing fraud and it’s not like she said, I was sorry for it. She actually kind of went out and said, I’m proud of it. So they cite this one time that when she was on pretrial release and she said to a journalist who you’d imagine is going to print this shit says, I more consider myself a con artist than anything.
00:04:23:11 – 00:04:30:05
Keith
You know how they have a saying that you can sell ice to an Eskimo? If there’s something I want, I’m getting it.
00:04:30:05 – 00:04:43:19
Keith
And this came from an article called What Daniel Miller Learned at Horace Mann and Rikers in New York Magazine on February 9th of 2022. Probably didn’t help her sentencing much.
00:04:43:22 – 00:04:48:25
Seth
Well, Horace Mann is a very fancy private school, and Rikers is, of course, a prison in New York.
00:04:48:25 – 00:05:21:14
Keith
And I like this tidbit that they also put about this whole publication. They said the defendant posed for a photograph in the same article while lounging and smoking with their court ordered ankle monitor visible. And she didn’t stop there. She then bragged in the article due to being locked up, her Instagram account has, quote unquote, thousands and thousands of direct messages asking her what her telegram name is to work with her. Thousands Seth, thousands.
00:05:21:17 – 00:05:24:28
Keith
She says, I’m so sought after, it’s insanity.
00:05:24:28 – 00:05:58:17
Seth
Yeah, that’s not even accurate English. So let’s see what insanity looks like on 9/11 of 23, which is just last month at the time of this this recording. We get her imprisonment. The defendant is hereby committed to the custody of the the Federal Bureau of Prisons to be imprisoned for a total term of, as we know, 60 months. That’s broken down within 36 months on counts one through three and then another 24 months on count four and five is supposed to be held down in the Sarasota, Sarasota County, Florida circuit court docket.
00:05:58:17 – 00:06:01:20
Seth
So this ties to where she probably will be doing her time,
00:06:01:20 – 00:06:19:15
Seth
the court makes final recommendation defendant to be designated an institution commensurate with security where the Bureau of Prisons can afford appropriate medical care for the defendant’s documented medical needs. So we know that she had a traumatic incident, but we don’t know what it was. If it’s tied to that medical need, defendant will participate in psychological care for her mental health needs.
00:06:19:15 – 00:06:24:10
Seth
So she also will have supervised release for three years, which is essentially three years of probation.
00:06:24:10 – 00:06:50:13
Seth
She has to report it to within 72 hours of release social conditions, mental health treatment. She must use her true name and she’s prohibited from using any other false identifying information which would include an alias, other false dates of birth, false Social Security numbers, or incorrect places of birth, which is exactly what she was doing, must pay the balance of any fine or restitution imposed.
00:06:50:20 – 00:07:09:09
Seth
So we know that she had lots of that prohibited from incurring new credit card charges or opening additional lines of credit without the approval of the probation office. So that’s another way to inhibit her ability to commit crime, must provide the probation office access to any requested financial information which may be shared with the asset recovery unit of the U.S. Attorney’s office.
00:07:09:09 – 00:07:33:05
Seth
Basically they own her ass. Everything she does. You shall be required to contribute to the cost of evaluation and treatment, programing and or monitoring based on the ability to pay availability of third party payments. So she has to contribute to her own recovery financially. So she only had a $500 assessment in addition to the $1.2 million she has to pay back and restitution.
00:07:33:05 – 00:07:37:22
Keith
And that’s it. We’re at the end of the case, this is less than a month old.
00:07:37:22 – 00:08:02:16
Keith
I’m trying to pick newer cases now. So this is hot stuff. Try to make it fresh like this. So let’s give you our final thoughts. So here the government trust is self-reporting and I don’t I really don’t know how the government could get around it because they had to give out loans very quickly in the COVID era because it was something we couldn’t predict. Because of that, Miller took advantage of it and you saw it.
00:08:02:16 – 00:08:05:10
Keith
She racked up a big bill and fraudulent loans,
00:08:05:10 – 00:08:33:04
Keith
five years for $1.3 million in this case, that’s not real bad. That’s kind of on par with our last few episodes where it’s been had been the million to 2 million mark for about 4 to 5 years in prison. Now, this whole time I’m researching this and I’m saving shit off to my hard drive very quickly because I’m like, I can’t believe she still has pictures of her and the Rolls-Royce and the handbag and all this shit up here.
00:08:33:07 – 00:08:54:23
Keith
And I was saving it down because usually what happens is these criminals will get in trouble and then they’re like BigRigBaby, he took his whole Instagram profile offline after he got in trouble, so I couldn’t believe her pictures are still up there. If you haven’t visited our I put these links if you go check the word sources and then I have a link.
00:08:54:23 – 00:08:59:19
Keith
If you click in there, I have links to the sources. Go check out her Instagram and check out her other photos and
00:08:59:19 – 00:09:02:17
Keith
see what you think. Do you have any extra thoughts? So.
00:09:02:20 – 00:09:27:28
Seth
I mean, this is interesting. I think there’s a whole suite of cases we look into about the misappropriation of SBA loans during COVID. I think we’re only scratching the surface on that. I think this one was interesting just because she was so egregiously obnoxious about the crime and posting it on Instagram. I mean, you know, it makes following the money so much easier when you can literally see in the pictures where the person’s staying and what she’s purchased with her stolen money.
00:09:28:00 – 00:09:43:11
Seth
So it’s kind of a, I don’t know, generational thing. I’m older. If I was going to steal money, I certainly wouldn’t brag about it and put it all over the Internet. But that’s just me. But maybe that’s kind of the point here, is that, you know, she was a bit of a megalomaniac and wanted the attention and was proud of it.
00:09:43:11 – 00:09:52:29
Seth
I mean, and, you know, we’ve seen that, I guess, in the last 20 or 30 years in certain social media and more of a pop culture where it’s kind of street cred to have done time and get arrested,
00:09:52:29 – 00:10:01:16
Seth
you know, maybe she even listens to Razzlekhan’s music. Who knows. So I thought that was interesting and at the same time, kind of sad, right?
00:10:01:16 – 00:10:18:29
Seth
It looks like she kind of for some of that had such a an obvious set of benefits from an upbringing. Right. You know, in New York City, private school clearly came from money. I guess she was kind of banished to go live a life of mediocrity down in Florida. So this is maybe her way of getting back at whoever put her there.
00:10:19:02 – 00:10:27:00
Seth
It sounds like, you know, it wasn’t all sunshine and puppies with her upbringing. I wish her well in a recovery when she gets out in five years.
00:10:27:00 – 00:10:48:09
Keith
All right. So with that, if you like to anything in this episode, please like subscribe whatever application you’re on. If you’re on Apple Podcasts five stars write in the description, whatever episode do you like the best? Haven’t been to our website. It’s e crime bytes dot com. Bytes spelled the computer way. B y as in yellow milk t e s.
00:10:48:11 – 00:11:27:12
Keith
Now, I want to give you a real quick preview of what’s coming next week. We’re going to switch gears and talk about a slightly different crime. Still going to be electronic crime, but it’s going to be different purposes. So it’s called hack to trade conspiracy with Vladislav Klyushin, and this guy hacked into places and then used information that he would gain before the public knew about it and then go use that valuable information on the stock market to make money from the hack that way.
00:11:27:14 – 00:11:49:20
Keith
And it’s a completely different shift in how we’ve seen our criminals make money. And I think it’s give me a lot of fun to see how just different this type of attack is in comparison to the other ones that Seth and I have brought to you so far. So we look forward to you coming back and we’ll bring in Vladislav on our next episode.
00:11:49:23 – 00:11:50:13
Keith
Thanks.
00:11:50:15 – 00:11:52:13
Seth
Bye. Take care.
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