Instagram Influencer Danielle Miller’s $1M Covid Loan Fraud – Act 3: Miller Is Caught

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 3: Instagram Influencer Danielle Miller’s $1M Covid Loan Fraud – Act 3: Miller Is Caught.

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

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:

00:00:09:28 – 00:00:20:06
Keith
Hey, welcome back to eCrimeBytes. This is season two, episode 11. We’ve been bringing you Danielle Miller this week. We had Acts one and two previously.

00:00:20:12 – 00:00:27:25
Keith
And if you’re jumping in the middle here, I’ll put a link in YouTube so you can go back and catch the prior acts if you haven’t seen them already.

00:00:27:25 – 00:00:39:18
Keith
So far, we’ve introduced you to Danielle Miller, who’s a Instagram influencer who has used personally identifiable information from a Department of Motor Vehicles system

00:00:39:18 – 00:00:50:17
Keith
to make fraudulent COVID loan applications and then get the loans, get the money, and put it into accounts under victims names.

00:00:50:20 – 00:01:09:02
Keith
Except Danielle owned the account, she had the money. So we’ve walked you through the victims. We’ve walk you through how she did that whole crime. And at this point, we’re now going to start walking through when law enforcement caught her and she begins the punishment phase of this whole scheme.

00:01:09:02 – 00:01:21:24
Keith
So one of the things I learned in this research process was that and this is pretty common actually in our our prior episodes, it’s usually not the first offense.

00:01:21:26 – 00:01:44:22
Keith
Danielle Miller had been doing crime prior to this, and there were prior records to her arrest. It was in five different states. She had arrests, many of which were larceny and identity related fraud, which falls squarely into what we’re introducing you to in this particular scheme that she had been doing.

00:01:44:22 – 00:01:54:22
Keith
When the agent looked at the booking photos, they matched all the licenses for the victims that Danielle faked and everything else in this case.

00:01:54:22 – 00:01:58:22
Keith
So there wasn’t anything that said it wasn’t Danielle Miller at this point.

00:01:58:22 – 00:02:18:01
Keith
Now, this I found interesting. This woman is trying to show that she’s a high roller in front of Rolls Royce in the Beverly Hills, California. And I wanted to highlight this fucking part to embarrass the shit out of her. She took Arizona unemployment benefits for a long time.

00:02:18:01 – 00:02:51:27
Keith
Apparently. It seems so. As much as she wants to imply that she’s a high roller rollin around in a Rolls Royce and so forth, she was out of work for a while, it looks like. And they use this facet in their investigation. And they said, hey these unemployment checks that she got under her normal name, like her real name, also went to the 60 Southwest apartment in Miami, Florida, which tied in all the crimes to that address that we brought in those prior acts.

00:02:51:27 – 00:03:06:00
Keith
So the you know, the TD Bank accounts, the SBA loans, all that stuff tied into the same address where she’s getting her supposedly legit unemployment checks to make it look like she’s Instagram influencer.

00:03:06:00 – 00:03:22:08
Seth
So according to the West Hollywood luxury hotel, the Petite Ermitage Ermitage excuse me, the guest who stayed at the hotel and registered under the name LMS in September of 2020, registered with the phone number ending in six, six, five, nine.

00:03:22:08 – 00:03:30:02
Seth
And we know this was the same number associated with Danielle Miller and her unemployment records.

00:03:30:02 – 00:03:46:13
Seth
Oh, and there’s an abandoned car that we mentioned. There’s an abandoned car, Jones. On May 4th of 21, law enforcement searched 2020 Honda Civic that had been rented. Remember, that was the zip car in November 2020 in the name of KE, which had been abandoned in Miami, Florida.

00:03:46:13 – 00:04:10:26
Seth
And as a result, a torn piece of paper from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity was discovered in the center console of the car. The name Danielle Miller and her address, 60 Southwest Street in Miami, Florida. So she literally could not have done a worse job of leaving evidence implicating her in a crime.

00:04:10:28 – 00:04:25:18
Keith
Yeah, something I’ve been abbreviating we keep saying 60 Southwest street. It’s actually 60 Southwest 13th Street. But the 60 Southwest, that’s the that’s what we keep saying. That’s the identifier we’re giving it. It’s that apartment. That’s her apartment.

00:04:25:18 – 00:04:26:05
Keith
Now,

00:04:26:05 – 00:04:27:04
Keith
now that they know

00:04:27:04 – 00:04:36:16
Keith
Danielle Miller is involved with this, the next usual logical step in law enforcement is to get some type of search warrant to go find more evidence about what it is that she did.

00:04:36:16 – 00:04:37:06
Keith
So

00:04:37:06 – 00:04:37:24
Keith
the

00:04:37:24 – 00:05:10:24
Keith
information or Danielle Miller used another victim identity in order to rent the high end apartment that she was living in in Florida. So even the search that happened in that apartment didn’t happen to an apartment that was actually under her real name. It was with an apartment that happened under a victim’s name. And when they did the search there in May of 2021, they found a bunch of stuff.

00:05:10:27 – 00:05:33:20
Keith
The biggest was, you know, an iPhone with a of evidence on it. But there was a bunch of financial related evidence as well. There were 14 TD Bank cards for accounts in various names. Now, immediately, if you said, hey, Bob, why do you have 14 accounts in other people’s names, you got to think Bob’s probably doing some shady shit.

00:05:33:23 – 00:05:48:28
Keith
And that’s what Danielle has happening in this in this situation. She has more than 35 counterfeit driver’s license as well. Different names of people from different states from Massachusetts, California, Arizona, Wisconsin and Texas.

00:05:48:28 – 00:05:58:05
Keith
The two victims that we’ve been talking about, the LMS and KE, they showed up in this pile of people. Now, this is this is what I thought was almost hilarious.

00:05:58:07 – 00:06:32:28
Keith
I don’t know why criminals do this. It’s almost like they write lists of their crime because they found a notebook and it has a quote unquote, To-Do list in there for October 11th of 2020, which includes in the notes and this is a quote, Apply for ten sbas and open at least eight TD accounts and she might as was written in there, you know, steal motherfuckers data off of the, you know, the motor vehicle site too so then she has a

00:06:32:28 – 00:06:41:13
Keith
handwritten scripts from this that helps her apply to these Eidl loans that we talked about at the beginning.

00:06:41:15 – 00:07:04:27
Keith
They gave examples you know here’s a quote from one that says, From COVID 19 to the winter storms, I need this eidl to provide necessary working capital to help my small business survive until normal operations will resume. Well, Danielle didn’t have a company, so all this was false, but she had evidence of her writing this stuff to get ready for these applications.

00:07:05:00 – 00:07:19:16
Keith
Now, she had a bunch of luxury items there, too. She had a Rolex watch Louis Vuitton bag, two Rimowa suitcases, and I’ll probably murder that name, but it sounds like expensive suitcases.

00:07:19:19 – 00:07:38:16
Seth
Yeah. So let’s move to the indictment. July 27th of 21, we got counts one, two, three, four. Wire fraud. We got counts four through five of aggravated identity theft, but the seeking of forfeiture of around $467,000 seized from TD Bank,

00:07:38:16 – 00:08:04:27
Seth
approximately 105,000 seized from another bank called Chime Financial or stride bank accounts. $4400 seized from a residence in Miami, Florida, another 27,000 and a half dollars in money orders seized from that same residence and an order of forfeiture money judgment equal to the amount of proceeds defended, obtained directly or indirectly as a result of the offenses, which is really pretty ballsy.

00:08:04:27 – 00:08:11:03
Seth
They didn’t just want the actual dollar amounts, but they wanted anything that was gained from the money.

00:08:11:03 – 00:08:32:06
Keith
And she still applied for unemployment while she had, what, half a million dollars at least a one bank account? Yeah, it’s like she wasn’t happy enough. So she pleads guilty on March 6th of 2023, this earlier this year, she pled guilty to all counts. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in the research I’ve done, and it’s not a ton.

00:08:32:06 – 00:08:39:28
Keith
I mean, it’s probably, what, like 50 some odd cases we’ve done. So far? I don’t think I’ve seen it where they’ve pled guilty to all the counts and she.

00:08:39:29 – 00:08:48:16
Seth
Yeah, that is odd. I’d have to get more detail as to why somebody would ever even agree to doing that unless maybe they promise to drop everything else. I don’t know. It was kind of weird.

00:08:48:19 – 00:09:16:16
Keith
And, you know, they agreed to forfeit all that stuff that Seth talked about earlier. There wasn’t anything in there that was new or surprising. They added a couple more things in there. In the luxury item category, they added some Dior shoes. They added some a Dior blouse. And then there’s a $1.3m entered in the form of a forfeiture money judgment.

00:09:16:16 – 00:09:39:25
Keith
So she’s on the hook for at least $1,000,000, plus all the shit that she bought with crime money. So with that, we’re going to pause because we’ve fulfilled our promise. Danielle Miller has been caught and we have one act left, which is the punishment that we’re going to save for you tomorrow. So if there’s anything you liked in this act, please like and subscribe whatever application you’re on.

00:09:39:27 – 00:09:45:11
Keith
If you’re on an application that has stars like Apple podcast, please give us five stars. If you’ve got a

00:09:45:11 – 00:09:56:18
Keith
text box to put anything in, please tell us what episodes your favorite. You haven’t been to our website. Please go there. eCrimeBytes dot com. Bytes spelled the computer way y as in yellow

00:09:56:18 – 00:09:58:03
Seth
milk, yellow milk.

00:09:58:06 – 00:10:10:23
Keith
And with that we hope you come back tomorrow and catch the remaining act and see what happens to Danielle Miller for all her criminal fuckery up until this point. So we’ll look forward to seeing you there.