A former USC and Jackson State linebacker has been arrested on charges for orchestrating a fraudulent COVID-19 benefits scheme.
Abdul-Malik McClain, 22, was taken into custody on Monday in Los Angeles. He is charged with 10 counts of mail fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft. McClain is pleading not guilty and was released on a $20,000 bond.
According to a press release from the Inspector General, “while a member of his university’s football team, McClain organized and assisted a group of other football players in filing fraudulent claims for unemployment benefits, including under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program established by Congress in response to the pandemic’s economic fallout.”
The fraudulent claims filed by the players allegedly led to Bank of America mailing them debit cards which “were loaded with at least hundreds of dollars, and sometimes thousands of dollars, in unemployment benefits.” The players used those debit cards to make cash withdrawals from ATMs. The indictment also alleges McClain made money off the players for helping them file their fraudulent claims.
McClain allegedly caused nearly three dozen fraudulent claims to be filed during the summer of 2020. “Those fraudulent applications sought at least $903,688 in PUA [Pandemic Unemployment Assistance] benefits and led the EDD to pay out at least $227,736,” according to the indictment.
McClain began his college football career at USC but transferred to Jackson State last December. His brother, Munir McClain, was suspended in October 2020 for his connection to the alleged scheme, ESPN reported.
Each mail fraud count could lead to 20 years in prison, and the aggravated identity theft counts carry a two-year mandatory sentence.
McClain will face a trial on February 15.
This arrest follows a string of similar fraud schemes involving COVID-19 benefits. Last week, a New Jersey man was sentenced to more than five years in prison for fraudulently taking $5.6 million in COVID-19 small business relief funds. The Daily Wire reported that the man “used the $5.6 million loan he received through PPP for many personal expenses, including payments to a luxury car dealership, investing millions in the stock market, and sending hundreds of thousands of dollars overseas to Pakistan.”
At the beginning of this month, The Daily Wire reported that around $3.7 billion in COVID-19 small business aid went to fraudsters and dead people. The New York Times wrote,
The finding adds to a mountain of evidence chronicling what the Small Business Administration’s inspector general, Hannibal Ware, called an “unprecedented amount of fraud” in the agency’s pandemic relief efforts. In October, Mr. Ware’s office chastised the agency for improperly doling out billions in relief money to self-employed people who made “flawed or illogical” claims of having additional workers on their payroll.
Its Economic Injury Disaster Loan program distributed more than $210 billion last year in loans and grants. The program was organized in a hurry by the Trump administration as millions of businesses temporarily shut down because of the coronavirus and was designed to quickly send out money to help companies keep up on their bills.