MIAMI – Danielle “Dani” Miller regularly used social media to flash Prada, Fendi, Dior, Valentino, Louboutin, Gucci, Hermes, Rolex, and other symbols of her extravagant lifestyle. She purported to come from old New York money when she showed off private jets, a Rolls-Royce, and a Porsche — all while living in a Miami luxury apartment.
It turns out that what her tens of thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok really saw was all part of a fake façade funded by the former Pepperdine law school student’s scams, according to federal prosecutors.
Recommended Videos
Miller’s criminal record includes fraud-related arrests in 2020, and 2021. She was at the center of investigations when she flaunted her black GPS ankle monitor on a “#housearrest” TikTok post that got over 2,000 hearts.
“I can truly say that I wholeheartedly enjoy carrying out plans and involving myself in challenging experiences,” she wrote in her Linkedin bio.
Miller, 33, the daughter of the former president of the New York State Bar Association, pleaded guilty on Monday to three counts of wire fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft in federal court, according to prosecutors.
Federal investigators accused her of getting her hands on over $1.5 million in COVID-19 pandemic relief funds from 2020 to 2021 while defrauding the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program.
According to the Sarasota Sheriff’s Office, detectives arrested Miller and Ciera Blas, both from New York, in 2020 for attempting to fraudulently withdraw money from a California woman’s bank account.
Sarasota deputies responded to a Chase Bank on May 7, 2020, in Sarasota, after bank personnel accused Miller of presenting a passport card that belonged to their client in Los Angeles to withdraw $8,000, according to deputies.
Deputies found more than $25,000 in cash inside several Chase envelopes, fake identifications with Miller’s photo, fraudulent credit cards, and six cell phones inside the car that the two were using, according to deputies.
That same year, Miller used the personal information of a Massachusetts resident to open a bank account and to apply for a federally-funded loan that she received through a fraudulent account set up with the stolen identity, according to federal prosecutors.
Miller went on to use the fake Massachusett driver’s license to travel to California and stay at hotels such as the Petit Ermitage, in West Hollywood, where she charged $5,500 to a fraudulent bank account in September 2020, according to prosecutors.
Miller was arrested on a federal criminal complaint out of Boston on May 11, 2021. Meanwhile in Sarasota County, Miller was convicted of fraudulent use of personal identification and sentenced to five years in prison on Oct. 21, 2022.
According to Miller’s profile with the Florida Department of Corrections, her initial receipt was on Nov. 16, 2022, and she was out of department custody by court order even though her release from Florida prison was scheduled for May 12, 2027.
“I more so consider myself a con artist than anything,” Miller told The New York Magazine last year. “You know how they have that saying that you can sell ice to an Eskimo? If there’s something that I want, I’m getting it.”
Miller also told The New York Magazine’s Intelligencer that she met Blas and the infamous fake heiress Anna Delvey, also known as Anna Sorokin, while they were all inmates at Rikers Island, which Blas denied.
The Homeland Security Investigations in Miami assisted in the federal case against Miller. U.S. District Court Chief Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV scheduled Miller’s sentencing for June 27, 2023, in Boston.