According to CBS Los Angeles and the Department of Justice, 31 year old Memphis rapper Nuke Bizzle, real name Fontrell Antonio Baines, was arrested September 23, in Las Vegas for charges related to an alleged million dollar unemployment scam. At the time of arrest, Bizzle was in possession of eight debit cards, seven of them were in the names of other people. According the federal affidavit, Bizzle is being charged with access device fraud, interstate transportation of stolen property and aggravated identity theft, and is facing a maximum of 22 years in a federal prison.
The incidents began to take place after Bizzle and fellow Memphis rapper Fat Wizza released a song/video on YouTube rapping about how they got rich by scamming unemployment “I done got rich offa EDD.” EDD is short for Employment Development Department, which is California’s unemployment agency. Through the majority of the video, both rappers can be seen holding a laptop computer, acting as if they’re filing claims online. Fat Wizza, who starts the song off, hits you with, “You gotta sell cocaine, I can just file a claim.” According to the DOJ, those statements were real and not just lyrics. They claim that Bizzle applied for and received for more than $1.2 million in jobless benefits, much of it coming from stolen identities. The $1.2 million dollars was all loaded onto 92 different pre loaded debit cards. They claim that Bizzle was able to get access to more than $704,000 of it by cash withdrawal and merchandise and service purchases.
Fat Wizza was not arrested in connection with the EDD scam and currently has no cases pending. Apparently his lyrics were just lyrics, although they were very convincing, enough to make it as a head line story for Fox News’ primetime news show Tucker Carlson Tonight. Along with discussing the song, Tucker and Beverly Hills mayor Lester Freeman discussed how millions of dollars in cards were recovered along with close to a half million dollars in cash. Although Nuke Bizzle gained popularity for the scam, California has recently been scammed out of millions of dollars. Through what was reported by NBC to be a breached data system, people were able to get information and access money that many people were waiting months to get, that never showed up. Surprisingly, 90% of people committing EDD fraud are not even from California. This money is reportedly being used primarily to purchase luxury items.
Fat Wizzle responded to the release of Nuke Bizzle’s DOJ report by clowning scam rappers, and making it clear that he is not a scammer at all and does not approve of the activity, “I don’t even got a bank account” he stated. He even released a song two weeks later titled No Scam Out The Trap. Nuke Bizzle has cameo appearances in the video, but he does not have a verse in this song. Fat Wizzle is loving the attention and free promotion. The video has now received over a half million views
Nuke Bizzle responds on his Instagram story by saying, that he been had money before EDD, and it appears that he was not lying. In November 2019, months before the COVID-19 shutdown, he was seen flexing with stacks of money.
Just plain old stupid if you know your doing wrong and you sing about it just doesn’t make sense to me not at all. What do people be thinking about I wonder?