Federal prosecutors announced that a Florida woman who used some of the more than $1 million in federal coronavirus relief monies that she unlawfully received by using stolen identities to charter a private plane to transport her cross-country entered a guilty plea on Monday.
According to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston, Danielle Miller, 32, of Miami, entered a guilty plea to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in U.S. District Court.
Prosecutors claimed that between July 2020 and May 2021, Miller applied for and received more than $1 million in Economic Injury Disaster Loan funds, as well as Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and related unemployment benefits, using the identities of more than ten different people and fictitious business names.
Miller had fake driver’s licenses with the victims’ names and her picture on them. Prosecutors claim that in one instance, she gained access to a victim’s online Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles records and used the personal data to open a bank account in that person’s name.
Prosecutors claim that Miller booked a Gulfstream private jet charter flight from Florida to California in August 2020 using a fake driver’s license. There, she slept at a five-star hotel using the same victim’s name.
In a different instance, the prosecution alleged that she had rented a posh apartment in Florida using someone else’s identity.
According to investigators, Miller talked about her lavish lifestyle on her Instagram account, where she had more than 34,000 followers. She posted about her expensive purchases as well as her stays at opulent hotels in California, which she paid for using the bank account of one of her victims. On July 27, Miller is due to receive his punishment. Her arrest took place in May 2021.
