Los Angeles Times
Nuke Bizzle’s rap career may be about to fizzle after the hip-hop artist who bragged on a track about getting rich by committing unemployment fraud was arrested Friday on federal charges that he ripped off more than $1.2 million in pandemic unemployment assistance.

The rapper boasts in a YouTube music video about a scheme to steal unemployment benefits and displays what appears to be dozens of benefits letters and bank cards that he raps paid for his swag.

But that fictional tale was true to life, prosecutors for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles allege. Bizzle, whose real name is Fontrell Antonio Baines, 31, is accused of using a series of stolen identities to fund his lifestyle in the Hollywood Hills, court documents said.

Baines allegedly exploited the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance provision of the CARES Act, which is designed to expand access to unemployment benefits to self-employed workers, independent contractors, and others who would not otherwise be eligible, according to the affidavit filed with the criminal charges.

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