Nuke Bizzle, a Los Angeles-based rapper, has been sentenced for defrauding the government of unemployment compensation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nuke (real name Fontrell Antonio Baines) accepted a plea deal on Wednesday (December 7) and received a six-year prison sentence after scamming the California Employment Development Department (EDD) of over $700,000 in pandemic unemployment benefits from July 2020 to September 2020. He was also ordered to pay $704,760 in restitution (via VLAD TV).
Per the report, Bizzle hatched the scheme by submitting false applications with completely made-up work histories with addresses from locations such as Beverly Hills and Koreatown. Additionally, he obtained “pre-loaded debit cards totaling $704,760 after submitting 92 fraudulent claims.”
Las Vegas authorities initially arrested Baines in September 2020 after he was found carrying eight debit cards, seven of which were under different names.
“Through his fraud, Baines turned the taxpayer-funded program into his personal piggybank,” federal prosecutors said during sentencing.
During the sentencing, he apologized for his involvement in the scam and asked the judge for mercy. He also said that the scheme was devised by his friends, and he allowed them to use his address to receive mail.
“They said they will give me money for letting mail come to the house. They would send the envelopes, and all I had to do was give them the mail when it arrived. When I found out how much money they were getting I felt played, and I started just taking the cards myself and telling them they never made it,” Bizzle wrote in a letter to the judge.
Outside of his prison sentence, Nuke has a track record of run-ins with the law. He was charged with illegally possessing a semi-automatic pistol and previously pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and possession of oxycodone with intent to distribute in a case transferred from the Western District of Tennessee.
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The beginning of the end for Nuke was when he went viral for releasing a song and music video titled “EDD,” where he bragged about getting “rich off of EDD” back in September 2020. Rapper Fat Wizza, who also appears in the video opens the recording by saying: “Your card has now been activated and is ready for use,” according to court documents.
As the video continues, an image that resembles the logo of California’s Employment Development Department is seen in the shot. He’s then seen with a bunch of money that he claimed were props. “Unemployment so sweet, we had $1.5M land this week,” he raps.
Nuke is one the latest figures in Hip Hop to get caught up in scams for receiving government funds during the pandemic. In September 2021, Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta star Mo Fayne was sentenced to 17½ years in prison for multiple charges including bank fraud and conspiracy for misusing funds from Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and wire fraud relating to the orchestrating a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme.
