Members of the Brooklyn-based “Woo gang” were arrested this week on charges of trying to steal $21 million in pandemic unemployment benefits — and authorities used their own social media posts to nail them.
Members of the gang appeared to brag about the scam in a YouTube rap video last year, federal investigators said, posing with front of stacks of cash and luxury vehicles while singing “It was me and Porter, we was huggin the block. Unemployment got us workin’ a lot.”
Eleven people were charged with pilfering identities of more than 800 people, submitting nearly 1,000 unemployment claims under those identities, then sitting back and collecting the cash from state unemployment systems, according to court documents.
The scam ended up netting a staggering $4.3 million, out of about $21 million in total claims filed.
Prosecutors said those involved likely face at least 10 years in prison, given the charges against them. They asked a judge to deny bail.
“The weight of the evidence [against] each defendant is overwhelming,” wrote the prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
Among that evidence is a text exchange between one Woo gang member and a contact named “Skyscraper,” who sold names and identifying information such as Social Security and driver’s license numbers and dates of birth.
Skyscraper charged $150 a name, collecting the money in cryptocurrency.
Unemployment claims were paid out on bank cards, which the scammers had mailed to addresses they controlled. They then went to ATMs to collect the cash.
Investigators tracked down video from the withdrawals, then matched those images to social-media posts of Woo gang members.
In some cases, gang members were caught with evidence.
One man charged in the scam crashed into a police officer’s car in Miami, and when officers searched, they found a stolen identity that had been used to bilk New York’s unemployment system of $12,048.
Another man, identified in court documents as Romean Brown, got snared in a traffic stop, an officer smelled marijuana, and confiscated several stolen identity bank cards. Undeterred, Mr. Brown called the bank the next day and reported the card lost, and got a new one, authorities said.
That card was used to withdraw $1,000 on Jan. 24, 2021. An image from the ATM camera showed a man in a striking green hoodie and baseball cap. Authorities matched the outfit to one Mr. Brown was wearing in a social media post.
In another post, Mr. Brown flashed a massive stack of bills along with the message “ION WANNA HERE YALL SAYING I GOT $1 ! 30K.”
The pandemic created an unprecedented opportunity for fraud, with Congress pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into enhanced unemployment benefits and programs to keep smaller businesses afloat.
Intent on getting the cash out quickly, both the feds and states that oversaw the unemployment payments cut corners, opening the window for bogus applications to be filed.
The Washington Times reported last year that more than $200 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims were paid out during the pandemic, with most of that going to international fraud rings.
Few of the overseas scammers have been charged, but hundreds of smaller U.S.-based scams have resulted in prosecutions.
Indeed, the Woo gang members aren’t even the first to have been arrested after rapping about it.
In late 2020, a West Coast-based rapper Nuke Bizzle, whose real name is Fontrell Baines, was arrested after authorities found a video he posted showing of stacks of unemployment applications and bragging that “you gotta sell cocaine, I just file a claim.”
He claimed it was just a parody, but investigators matched the names on the applications in the video to actual bogus claims filed.
Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson featured the video on his show on Sept. 22, 2020. A day later, Mr. Baines was arrested in Las Vegas, and police said he was in possession of seven bogus unemployment benefit cards.
Mr. Baines is still awaiting trial. He also faces federal firearms charges.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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