The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that a Memphis rapper who bragged in a YouTube music video that he was using pandemic-related jobless benefits scam to get rich has pleaded guilty to federal fraud and firearms charges.
Fontrell Antonio Baines, aka “Nuke Bizzle,” pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud and unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon. He is expected to enter a guilty plea in federal court in downtown Los Angeles shortly.
According to a court documents filed with the charging documents in the case, Baines published a music video called “EDD” on YouTube and Instagram, in which he brags about doing “my swagger for EDD” and holding up a stack of EDD parcels, rhyming about getting rich by “going to the bank with a stack of these,” which officials say is a reference to the payment cards that arrived in the mail.
In his plea agreement, Baines admitted to taking advantage of the CARES Acts’ Pandemic Unemployment Assistance regulations between July and September 2020, using stolen information to apply for unemployment insurance that he had sent to addresses in Beverly Hills and Koreatown.
According to federal officials, one of the false names was that of a Missouri man who momentarily attended school but never had a job in California, and whose name was on the debit card that Baines then used remove roughly $2,500.
Baines confessed to filing 92 bogus claims with EDD to defraud the Treasury of $1.3 million. Prosecutors say losses totaled $704,760.