MIAMI \u2013 A popular social media influencer and singer has been sentenced to more than two years in federal prison for orchestrating a years-long fraud scheme that began with COVID-19 relief loan fraud and ended with attempts to use fake checks to pay for luxury cars.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 11, U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore sentenced Scott Lee Huss, 28, to 27 months in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud.<\/p>\n
\u201cPandemic relief programs were designed to help struggling businesses and families\u2014not to fund luxury lifestyles,\u201d said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Qui\u00f1ones for the Southern District of Florida. \u201cThose who exploited these programs for their personal gain stole from the American people. Our Office will continue holding anyone accountable who defrauded COVID-19 relief funds, regardless of status or notoriety.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to court documents, Huss fraudulently applied for and received six Paycheck Protection Program loans totaling more than $600,000. Instead of using the funds for business expenses and employee payroll, Huss spent the money on cryptocurrency and luxury cars.<\/p>\n
In 2023, Huss mailed fraudulent \u201cpayment vouchers\u201d purporting to be checks to car finance companies in an effort to discharge loans on his vehicles. In total, Huss sent more than $300,000 in false checks in an attempt to fraudulently obtain a Lamborghini and a Mercedes-Benz.<\/p>\n
U.S. Attorney Reding Qui\u00f1ones, Acting Special Agent in Charge Jos\u00e9 R. Figueroa of the Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) Miami, and Acting Special Agent in Charge Ryan McSeveney of the U.S. Department of State\u2019s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) Miami Field Office, made the announcement.<\/p>\n
HSI Miami and DSS Miami Field Office investigated the case with assistance from the Department of Labor-Office of Inspector General, the Small Business Administration-Office of Inspector General, the Sunny Isles Police Department, and the Aventura Police Department.<\/p>\n
Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosenfeld and Senior Litigation Counsel Michael Berger prosecuted the case.<\/p>\n
Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at\u00a0www.flsd.uscourts.gov<\/a> or at\u00a0http:\/\/pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov<\/a>, under case number 25-cr-20087.<\/p>\n ###\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2013 A popular social media influencer and singer has been sentenced to more than two years in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":{"0":"post-45983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hialeah","8":"tag-hialeah","9":"tag-hialeah-headlines","10":"tag-hialeah-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}