Ashley Bautista credit card scheme:Rapper Young Ash and five others indicted using Instagram good life photos to recruit victims where card cracking orchestrated & funds stolen.
A rising rapper with a major social media following has been accused of using her fame to dupe her fan base into a credit card scheme reported the nypost.
Come Wednesday, Ashley Bautista, aka Rapper Young Ash and others appeared at Manhattan Supreme Court where she pled not guilty to grand larceny.
The hip-hop artist, known as a ‘recruiter’, prodded followers while flashing wads of cash in snaps on social media, promising her gullible followers fast money in exchange for their bank account information, according to assistant DA, Alona Katz.
She was indicted with five co-defendants for allegedly using victims’ personal information, forged checks and ATM cards to withdraw cash from bank accounts in a scheme known as ‘card cracking,’ between August and September 2017, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
‘As Commissioner O’Neill and I warned last year, ‘card cracking’ scammers with large followings on Snapchat and other platforms are luring people into their schemes by showing off designer merchandise, luxury cars and stacks of cash,’ said DA Cyrus Vance Jr. in a statement.
‘Social media users who see these posts promising quick, fast money should know that they are scams.’
A cursory regard shows Rapper Young Ash having an impressive 366K followers on Instagram
Card cracking usually appears as a contest or gift card giveaway on social media accounts which highlight the good life, including designer merchandise, luxury cars, and stacks of cash. Eventually scammers promising quick, fast money ask for personal bank information and in which they deposit checks into a victim’s account, withdrawing the money before the banks discover the checks are fake.
Co-defendant Gabriel Molina, 32, a former concierge at a luxury Upper West Side building, was responsible for collecting rent checks. He secretly snapped pictures of the checks and sent them to Frayluis Henriquez, 23, who used them to create forged checks, authorities said.
Molina and Henriquez are accused of having used the bank accounts of Bautista’s fans to deposit the forged checks and withdraw money, according to officials.
Justin Simon, 22, and Jarod Bailey, 21, acted as runners who allegedly deposited checks and withdrew cash from the accounts.
The indictment follows the Manhattan D.A.’s office revealing last year, 39 people having been involved in a $2.5 million card cracking fraud.
Bautista was released without bail. No word on what’s next for the aspiring rapper’s career….
