Instagram Influencer Danielle Miller’s $1M Covid Loan Fraud – Act 2: There Is A Post For That

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 2: Instagram Influencer Danielle Miller’s $1M Covid Loan Fraud – Act 2: There Is A Post For That.

Please check out our prior acts for the background:

Instagram Influencer Danielle Miller’s $1M Covid Loan Fraud – Act 1: Meet The Victims

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 – 00:00:34:01
Keith
Hey, welcome back to eCrimeBytes Season two, Episode 11. We’re talking about Danielle Miller and her $1.2 million of COVID Loan Fraud Act one, which, if you’re watching this on YouTube, I’ll put a little thing you can click on up here to go back to Act one. If you’re just jumping in, we introduced you to all the victims and what happened to those victims.

00:00:34:04 – 00:00:55:22
Keith
We’re now in Act two and we call this one there’s a post for that because, of course, Danielle Miller couldn’t just do crime. She did crime and she posted about it on Instagram. And we’re going to take a look at some of these pictures of her crimes. So we last left you. We were talking about the victims and we talked about LMS.

00:00:55:24 – 00:01:05:22
Keith
Most of our last act, we briefly talked about this other victim called KE, but we didn’t tell you much about her. Now we’re going to tell you a little bit about her.

00:01:05:22 – 00:01:19:29
Keith
She’s a resident of Wisconsin. Now, KE, she reported an unauthorized credit card opened in her name, as well as unauthorized rental of a Zipcar vehicle in Miami, Florida.

00:01:19:29 – 00:01:31:03
Keith
According to Zipcar, it was a 2020 Honda Civic and it was rented via mobile application on or about November 30th of 2020, in the name of victim KE.

00:01:31:06 – 00:01:53:27
Keith
Now, this is the interesting technical tangent here. Zipcar explained that in order to rent a car, I’ve never done this, so this is new to me. You’re not only forced to upload the front and back of your driver’s license, which kind of makes sense if you’re going to be driving and renting a car. But you also have to upload a selfie of yourself.

00:01:54:00 – 00:02:23:23
Keith
And then Zipcar has this authentication feature, which is facial recognition, and it runs it across the photographs to determine whether or not they matched. And when Zipcar did this, it said the license that we got and the selfie that we got, they matched. Okay. So from a security standpoint, what they’re trying to do there is show that the person that’s in possession of the card also

00:02:23:23 – 00:02:25:09
Keith
is the person on the card.

00:02:25:15 – 00:02:47:15
Keith
Okay. So this is a real neat, tricky way of doing that. The pitfall of this is if you have a fake card, but it’s really you and the selfie, all that’s going to look real and it’s going to come out, you know, thumbs up and you’re going to match, right? Even though it’s a fake driver’s license and that’s what I think happened here.

00:02:47:18 – 00:03:02:28
Keith
In this particular case, the driver’s license that was uploaded to Zipcar was a Wisconsin driver’s license. Makes sense. That’s where KE’s from. It’s in the name of KE. Had a date of birth of 1990.

00:03:02:28 – 00:03:25:04
Keith
A date in 1990. And then the the cardholder was identified as being five seven tall. So five foot seven inches tall. The photograph on the license and the selfie photograph that was sent there was of a woman with dark hair and long eyelashes.

00:03:25:11 – 00:03:56:21
Keith
Okay. Keep that in mind here, because when they went and checked KE, because she’s a real person in the national law enforcement telecommunication system, KE’s five three. So that’s four inches shorter than the person listed on this other driver’s license. And also, KE has blond, brown hair and blue eyes. So nothing like the person that is on the card in the selfie that was sent to Zipcar.

00:03:56:23 – 00:04:29:03
Seth
Okay. So let’s talk a little bit more about this. So our victim, KE, again, a resident of Wisconsin, we had an agent review the TD Bank records for a different account here ending in 0862 in the name of KE, which reflects a date of birth, 1990 and an address at 60 Southwest down in Florida. Now, the TD Bank records for this reflect state of Arizona benefit payments in the amount of $6200 between August and September of 2020.

00:04:29:03 – 00:04:51:04
Seth
Now, KE indicated she did not apply for any Arizona unemployment benefits. So how are we getting a feel here that, you know, we had a random victim here who is basically their their identities being used to move money around and obviously a fraudulent manner TD bank accounts to be bank excuse me TD Bank sort of get

00:04:51:04 – 00:04:54:05
Seth
TD Bank records for that account ending in 0862.

00:04:54:05 – 00:05:05:21
Seth
Also show that on August one of 2020 and again August 4th of 2020, this account was accessed via the same IP address Keith mentioned earlier. Not a coincidence.

00:05:05:23 – 00:05:08:14
Keith
Yeah. The one ending in dot 194.

00:05:08:22 – 00:05:41:05
Seth
Yeah. So additionally TD bank records for account ending in 086 to show for money orders made out to KE that were deposited into the account via ATM deposits. The money orders were stamped Publix 1009 and we’re in the amounts of 500, 500, 500, and 400 and dated July 29th of 2020. The purchaser signature is not legible on any of the images, and the agent believe that the same person is impersonating both LMS and Katie.

00:05:41:05 – 00:05:43:03
Seth
We know this, of course, is in fact the case.

00:05:43:03 – 00:05:43:22
Keith
So

00:05:43:22 – 00:06:04:18
Keith
usually when you’re an investigator and you have some information that we’ve introduced you so far, you take these pieces of information and you go to your data sources and you kind of pull, well, if you’re talking about a sweater, you would pull a thread of a sweater, right? And that thread would eventually just get longer and longer and longer and the sweater unravels.

00:06:04:18 – 00:06:19:20
Keith
And that’s when an investigator sort of does in the digital sense, where they just go pick that piece of information and they pull on that thread until there’s no more sweater left. One of the things that they could do is they have this IP address so immediately they can go to this

00:06:19:20 – 00:06:32:03
Keith
motor vehicle system and they say, show us any account that has ever been accessed by this dot 194 address, because if it’s been accessed, something bad may have happened.

00:06:32:06 – 00:07:00:26
Keith
Well, when they did that immediately came back 27 different accounts were accessed by that IP address between August 1st and August 5th of 2020, which is a very short time span for a lot of people. Now, assuming that there’s an individual behind all that accessing these 27 accounts, they’re going to have access to an enormous amount of PII or personally identifiable information.

00:07:00:29 – 00:07:25:06
Keith
The type of information you would need to fill out loan information or, you know, state unemployment benefits or anything else that you would want to get money for. Pretty much now, they started pulling on that thread. They said, okay, and now we have 27 names. Let’s figure out out of these 27 names who’s victims and how bad they’re victimized and all that kind of stuff.

00:07:25:06 – 00:07:48:12
Keith
And they sort of pull on those 27 threads and they figure it out that in ten of those 27 instances, ten of them were used for fraudulent loans and they all came back to this IP address that ends in 194 within minutes of accessing them. So not even days. I mean, it’s it’s access to then the crime happens.

00:07:48:14 – 00:07:54:29
Keith
So HSI and we talked about this earlier. You asked me which agents HSI Seth I have it on the slide.

00:07:55:01 – 00:07:55:15
Seth
Thank you.

00:07:55:18 – 00:07:59:07
Keith
So HSI finds more victims. They

00:07:59:07 – 00:08:10:06
Keith
go out there and basically look at their IP address, see who’s who’s else is submitting these EIDL loans. And they found that there was one particular EIDL loan that was in the amount of

00:08:10:06 – 00:08:14:16
Keith
$125,000. So we’re talking about loans that are

00:08:14:16 – 00:08:19:22
Keith
huge in my opinion. I mean, these are these are big loans that one individual is getting.

00:08:19:22 – 00:08:21:05
Keith
Danielle Miller behind the scenes

00:08:21:05 – 00:08:21:20
Keith
now,

00:08:21:20 – 00:08:45:22
Keith
when you take all the loans that she applied for, whether or not they were approved or not, it added up to more than $900,000. So almost $1,000,000. And we kept saying $1.2 million throughout here. And that’s because she had other schemes in that that dollar amount. So at the end, it actually add up to 1.2.

00:08:45:22 – 00:08:53:27
Keith
But this specific the specific type of loan, the EIDL loan was $900,000. That was the lion’s share of her scheme.

00:08:53:27 – 00:08:55:27
Keith
There were a couple of other things that she did. So

00:08:55:27 – 00:09:03:19
Keith
in some times it’s in her victims names. She would sign up for unemployment benefits just to make more money.

00:09:03:19 – 00:09:13:02
Keith
And you’re going to see later on that she actually herself signed up for unemployment benefits through some of these states, and that helped identify her as well.

00:09:13:02 – 00:09:46:00
Seth
So Miller is finally identified at this point, a review the TD Bank records for account number ending and 1010 in the name of LMS revealed that the account was associated with an address in the Miami, Florida area and that account transactions took place primarily in Florida at the Publix. Among these transactions was one that was posted on September 4th of 2020 titled Debit Card purchased a u t, blah, blah, blah, visa, DBA, blah, blah, blah global in the amount of $2390.

00:09:46:03 – 00:09:52:24
Seth
So this is a company called XO Global. XO Global is a private aviation company that caters to businesses and individuals.

00:09:52:24 – 00:10:00:13
Keith
Yeah. Which actually seems Now if we could pause here for a second, that actually seems kind of cheap because.

00:10:00:15 – 00:10:02:23
Seth
We’ve seen other cases, you earn more money spent.

00:10:02:23 – 00:10:12:05
Keith
Yeah and Bryant like this is $2,390 this wouldn’t even cover that the limo rides in the Bryant.

00:10:12:05 – 00:10:12:12
Seth
Or the.

00:10:12:12 – 00:10:13:27
Keith
Fuel.

00:10:14:00 – 00:10:38:09
Seth
Or the food. Yeah that was like I think 20 or 30 grand a pop every time they went somewhere. So information provided by XO Global indicated that this charge related to a flight that was booked in the name of LMS on September 4th of 2020, with the departure date of September 9th from Lauderdale in Florida to Van Nuys, California, which sounds off, which is that’s a cross-country flight, maybe because it was the heart of covid and they were desperate for any business, I don’t know.

00:10:38:11 – 00:11:05:18
Seth
XO Global provided a photograph of the ID and the customer use, which appeared to be a Massachusetts license in the name of LMS, the agent review the photograph and believe the license was counterfeit. It was as certain security features were missing, lines were blurred. The photographs did not depict the victim LMS. Instead, the driver’s license photograph depicted a female with dark hair and long eyelashes with a listed height of five seven the edition.

00:11:05:18 – 00:11:23:17
Seth
Additionally, rather, the document had an issue date of June 30th of 2020 at an expiration date of November 7th of 2020. 5 months. Yeah, I usually see them, what, like ten years at a clip? Right. So that was also I mean, good for that person for actually examining the driver’s license.

00:11:23:17 – 00:11:24:10
Keith
So

00:11:24:10 – 00:11:41:23
Keith
again, more threads of the sweater. They went and looked at ATM footage because you have these debit cards and so forth, and they identified the same woman in this ATM footage as being the same woman in these driver’s licenses that we’ve seen with these victims.

00:11:41:23 – 00:11:49:26
Keith
The bank, the 1010 TD Bank account, that’s kind of the main account that she seemed to use.

00:11:49:28 – 00:12:14:12
Keith
Had this one particular charge that says the Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hills, California. Okay. That’s kind of specific. And I imagine not a lot of people in the world can probably afford to go to the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. So I think the agents locked on to this thread in the sweater and sort of pulling out a little more to see what they could figure out.

00:12:14:12 – 00:12:17:29
Keith
They also found another charge

00:12:17:29 – 00:12:37:04
Keith
within like nine days of this at another high end luxury hotel. It was a $5,500 charge of this place. And I’m going to apologize if I murder the name, but it looks like it’s a Petite Ermitage that’s around. It’s a luxury hotel, West West Hollywood, California.

00:12:37:06 – 00:12:42:24
Keith
So these are two hotels. This is where there’s a Instagram post for that.

00:12:42:24 – 00:12:55:24
Keith
So, again another thread we’re going to pull on this until we can pull the thread and the sweater disappears. The agent went out there and said, I’m going to look for information about who was visiting this hotel and

00:12:55:24 – 00:13:03:18
Keith
he or she ran into this Instagram posts and the user name has changed since then.

00:13:03:18 – 00:13:32:25
Keith
I’ll just read it to you so you know what it is? It’s k i l l a d m i l l a. Killa Killa Milla? And on September 10th, 2020, has a picture of this woman in front of a white Rolls Royce at the Beverly Hills Hotel. It’s like this pink peach building. And I’m going to put a picture, the actual Instagram picture on the screen for our video viewers.

00:13:32:25 – 00:13:33:07
Keith
Now.

00:13:33:07 – 00:14:04:11
Keith
And the agent says this is I believe, this woman that I see in this picture, because I’ve the agent can see with their eyes and the agent has also seen all these driver’s licenses. They said this looks like the same woman to me that’s been perpetrating all these different crimes. Now, if you get the chance, I have these links and in all these episodes that we do, go to her Instagram posts and read the comments because people are fucking hilarious.

00:14:04:14 – 00:14:26:12
Keith
The one I’m putting on your screen right now, I don’t even have half the funny comments on there, but it’s like, Hey, had heard you give all that shit back when the law caught up with the comments of those affected. I was just laughing half the time trying to make these screen captures. But I have probably the main image that the agents use right there where it’s clearly says the Beverly Hills, and it’s the hotel on the side there.

00:14:26:18 – 00:14:48:11
Keith
She’s in this blue suit looking thing, and there’s a white Rolls-Royce there. It’s a very expensive looking picture, I’ll tell you that much. Now, that’s not enough. The agent says, Hey, I looked around a little further on that that Instagram profile, some interesting shit. Like, for instance, there was this other post that was geotagged with the

00:14:48:11 – 00:14:57:22
Keith
location of this luxury hotel, the Petite Ermitage, and included a photograph of a woman standing in a wallpaper room holding a handbag.

00:14:57:25 – 00:15:17:29
Keith
Now I’m, not a fashion person, but I do know from her comment in here, she says It’s a Birkin bag. I know from my hip hop music that Birkin bags are expensive, so I imagine this is another very expensive picture that I have on the screen for you. I wouldn’t know it. I was just looking at I was kind of like, Hey, this woman’s holding the bag.

00:15:17:29 – 00:15:37:03
Keith
But when I did the research behind the scene, it’s a very expensive bag is what I’ve learned. Now, as you see now we have two images there. Basically, this is the smoking gun, right? I mean, if this is a murder scene, she’d be standing there with blood on one hand and a gun in the other. But it’s electronic crime, so it’s a little sexier.

00:15:37:03 – 00:15:39:22
Keith
It’s a Rolls-Royce and an expensive handbag.

00:15:39:22 – 00:15:44:25
Keith
And again, the the comments are funny because everybody’s kind of like, you have to give that shit back, didn’t you?

00:15:44:25 – 00:15:49:29
Seth
Hah. Commenters are the worst.

00:15:49:29 – 00:16:13:13
Keith
Go there. You go to her profile and I’m going to go ahead and pop her profile. Instagram like the public portion of it on the screen for you. Now her name’s different. And that’s why I said I wrote it for you earlier. Now, her name on Instagram is the Daniel Nicole Miller all squished together so it looks like her name had changed over time.

00:16:13:15 – 00:16:36:12
Keith
Now, this is what Seth this is what stumped me. This woman is a quote unquote, Instagram influencer with 64 fucking posts, but she has almost 35000 followers. And I’m like, How does that ratio happen? That’s like Razzlekhan having 45 videos, but what was it, 35,000 followers? It’s just insane.

00:16:36:19 – 00:16:39:15
Seth
When you’re criminal. They want to see it.

00:16:39:18 – 00:16:58:22
Keith
Yeah. And she says in her description, Just so you’re very clear here, she wants you to be very clear. Her description says, I am not an influencer, and then it just says NYC as in like New York City. And just to give you a flavor of her pictures, I’m not going to show you all of them. I just kind of show you the best of them here.

00:16:58:24 – 00:17:17:26
Keith
Not all of them are her making out with her friends. Here’s one of her on a car that clearly shows she’s in fucking Florida because it has a Florida license plate under her feet there. And that’s why I showed this picture to show she’s clearly is in Florida, even though she’s geotagging around the world. This is a BMW.

00:17:17:29 – 00:17:44:06
Keith
Here’s her in I don’t know, like a restaurant, like a deli or like diner of some sort. And then here’s her and her friend. This is the one this is literally one of the middle pictures of her kissing her friend. I was like, oh, that’s going to become our thumbnail. And all of them, again, have very funny comments that you’ll have to go through if you want to check out her profile again, linked through our episode information.

00:17:44:08 – 00:18:06:06
Keith
So with that, we’re going to pause here at the end of Act two. So we got you to the point of them knowing it’s Danielle Miller. Now let’s catch her in Act three. So there’s anything you liked in this act, please like and subscribe, whatever, whatever application you’re on, if there’s stars, if there’s a follower like button, please click it.

00:18:06:06 – 00:18:15:26
Keith
If you have a description, please type in the description whatever episode was your favorite, if it’s this one, put this title in there. If you haven’t been to our website, please do visit it.

00:18:15:26 – 00:18:30:15
Keith
eCrimeBytes, bytes spelled the computer away, be as in yellow milk t e s dot com. And with that, Seth and I hope you come back tomorrow and catch us on act three with Danielle Miller is caught. Thanks.