An Instagram influencer — and self-proclaimed “con artist” — flaunted her way to a federal guilty plea.
Native New Yorker Danielle Miller, 32, admitted Monday the luxurious lifestyle she bragged about on TikTok and Instagram was funded with more than $1 million in stolen COVID-relief loans, federal prosecutors said.
Miller pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $1.5 million in government funds by swiping the identities of more than 10 people, according to the the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.
The Horace Mann graduate — who has more than 34,000 followers on Instagram — then brazenly publicized pricey items she bought via the fraud scheme, the feds said. She posted about a trip in a private jet and zooming in a Rolls-Royce with a Louis Vuitton bag by her side.
Miller was sentenced to state prison in another fraud case in Florida last October. The allegations against her were detailed in a Feb. 2022 New York Magazine profile.
“Honestly, I more so consider myself a con artist than anything,” she shamelessly told the mag.
On Monday, Miller copped to three counts of wire fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft in a Massachusetts federal courtroom, appearing over video from a jail cell.
She agreed to give up $1.3 million and serve six years in prison in return for pleading guilty. Her sentencing is scheduled for June 27.
Prosecutors said Miller grabbed up loans handed out by the federal government as a result of the COVID pandemic from July 2020 through May 2021 by using the personal identifying information of other people and fake business names.
“Miller posted her extravagant use of the fraud proceeds and stolen identities, publicizing her purchasing of luxury goods and renting of luxury accommodations,” the US Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
Part of her scheme was possessing forged driver’s licenses in victims’ names, but with her photo. In one wild instance, she used a fake license in the name of a Massachusetts victim to take a trip on a Gulfstream private jet from Florida to California where she stayed in a posh hotel under the same person’s name, prosecutors said.
She also used the ID of another victim to rent a luxury apartment in Florida, prosecutors said. She moved from New York to Miami during the pandemic.
Miller was sentenced in Florida to five years in state prison in her other fraud case where authorities said she tried to withdraw $8,000 using a California woman’s ID, the Bradenton Herald reported in October.
The former Pepperdine law student is one of more than 1,000 people convicted of defrauding the COVID-19 relief programs, the US Government Accountability Office detailed last month.
With Post wires
