Rapper Nuke Bizzle pleads guilty to $1.2M COVID relief fraud after bragging in video

Rapper Nuke Bizzle is headed to prison fo’ shizzle.

The rapper, whose real name is Fontrell Antonio Baines, 33, agreed to plead guilty to federal fraud and firearms charges after he bragged in a YouTube music video that he got rich by ripping off the COVID-19 unemployment fund, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

He’ll face a maximum of 30 years behind bars on one count of mail fraud and one count of unlawful firearm and ammunition possession when he enters his guilty plea in Los Angeles court, the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a news release.

The Memphis rapper admitted to making 92 false claims using collaborators’ names that totaled $1.2 million through the California Employment Development Department. The not-so-covert musician then made a music video for a song called “EDD” where he held up a stack of EDD envelopes that apparently contain government debit cards.

“Unemployment so sweet. We had 1.5 land this week,” Baines raps in the video. Another voice adds, “You gotta sell cocaine, I can just file a claim.”

Baines admitted in his plea that between July and September of 2020, he obtained unemployment insurance money allocated by the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance provisions of the federal CARES Act. He allegedly used addresses in Beverly Hills and Koreatown where he could then grab the debit cards, from which he’d later withdraw cash.

As part of his plea, he agreed to forfeit $57,750 that was seized by cops when he was busted in October 2020.

He was caught at a Hollywood Hills residence with a semi-automatic pistol and 14 rounds of ammo – which he was barred from possessing because of previous felony convictions, the US attorney’s office said.

Baines has been in prison since his 2020 arrest, prosecutors said.