Aurelia Butler

BOSTON (Reuters) – A social media influencer and self-proclaimed con artist pleaded guilty on Monday to fraudulently obtaining more than $1 million in COVID-19 pandemic-related loans from the U.S. government that she used to bankroll a lavish lifestyle that she flaunted on Instagram.Danielle Miller, whose scams in this and other cases were chronicled in a New York Magazine profile last year, appeared before a federal judge in Boston by video from a jail cell to plead guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identify theft charges.As a part of a plea deal with prosecutors, the 33-year-old agreed to forfeit $1.3 million and serve six years in prison, 16 months of which may overlap with a five-year sentence she received in October in a separate Florida bank fraud case. Her sentencing was set for June 27.Prosecutors said Miller used the identities of more than 10 people to fraudulently set up bank accounts and obtain more than $1 million in pandemic-related loans intended for small businesses. She used the money for travel and luxury purchases such as a Rolex, a Louis Vuitton bag and Dior shoes, and posted photos on Instagram of herself at luxury hotels in California where she used a bank account in the name of one of her victims.Originally from New York, Miller is the daughter of a former New York State Bar Association president and a graduate of the prestigious Horace Mann School. She was already facing charges in the separate Florida state court fraud case when she was arrested in May 2021 at a luxury apartment in Miami, where she had moved during the pandemic.”Honestly, I more so consider myself a con artist than anything,” Miller was quoted as saying in the New York Magazine article.The case is an example of fraud that became rampant as the federal government rushed to distribute more than $5 trillion in relief funds to help people, businesses and local governments affected by the pandemic.More than 1,000 people have been convicted of defrauding COVID-19 relief programs, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said last month. The White House last week said President Joe Biden plans to ask Congress to provide $1.6 billion in new funding to crack down on fraud tied to the programs. More

Ministers will use more than £800mn of cash sitting in dormant bank, pension and investment accounts to boost local communities and help vulnerable people in England struggling with the cost of living crisis.The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said on Tuesday that the Dormant Assets Scheme (DAS) would initially release £76mn tied up in forgotten bank accounts, before unlocking millions of pounds from dormant pension and investment accounts later in the year.Some £45mn of the initial funding will be awarded as interest-free loans by Fair4All Finance, a non-profit organisation, to 69,000 people contending with the sharp rise in living costs and 15-year high interest rates.Another £31mn will be disbursed by social investors Access and Big Society Capital to hundreds of charities, with the aim of making buildings owned by social enterprises more environmentally friendly through more efficient energy systems, such as solar panels and new boilers.Since 2011, the government has used the DAS to release almost £900mn from dormant bank accounts, which has gone towards generating social investment and helping financially vulnerable people.Dormant assets are defined as accounts that have been left untouched for long periods of time. The DAS attempts to reunite people with their lost funds, but it uses unclaimed money to support social and environmental initiatives.

DCMS said that after the release of the initial £76mn, a further £738mn would be made available from insurance, pensions, investment and wealth management products that have been left unclaimed.The government will also open the scheme to community wealth funds — pots of money released to deprived areas over a large timeframe, giving local residents the right to decide how the funds are spent. Sir Ronald Cohen, co-founder of Big Society Capital, which was set up in 2012, said: “Unclaimed assets is public money; it doesn’t belong to the banks or insurers, even though it sits on their balance sheet.”Civil society minister Stuart Andrew said: “The creation of community wealth funds will give local residents in some of the more deprived areas of the country the power to improve where they live and invest in what’s important to them.”Reclaim Fund Ltd, the company set up to manage the DAS’s money, aims to sign up pension and insurance groups such as Aviva in the coming months, with investment businesses and wealth managers joining later this year.Companies voluntarily commit to transferring money from the dormant assets they hold to the Reclaim Fund, which has enough cash to reimburse people who rediscover lost accounts after they have been closed down.The DAS has to date supported a range of projects including the Greater Manchester Homes Partnership, which has housed 355 homeless people with support from Big Society Capital, and Homebaked, a co-operative bakery and community land trust in Liverpool. More

China’s political leadership set a gloomy projection for growth in the world’s second-largest economy this weekend, despite the buzz of optimism following three years of closures during the coronavirus pandemic. Policymakers at the annual meeting of China’s rubber-stamp parliament in Beijing set a growth target of just 5 per cent for 2023, the lowest in decades and trailing last year’s Covid-era figure of 5.5 per cent, which it failed to reach.“The reason to choose a low target is to ensure they can hit it,” said Carlos Casanova, senior economist for Asia at investment bank UBP, who described the 5 per cent figure as a “floor” that should easily be exceeded, in part because of comparisons with last year’s weakness.China’s economy notched just 3 per cent growth in 2022 after the government imposed stringent lockdowns in big cities in an effort to stem the virus.Even if the 2023 figure is surpassed, the government’s caution signifies a sharply changed economic environment as China emerges from the shadow of the pandemic.

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Faced with a rolling property crisis, falling exports as global interest rates rise and the hangover from zero-Covid restrictions, policymakers are less concerned about a high target — a figure that has become closely watched after two decades of consistent outperformance — than with the threat of another disappointing reading. Xiangrong Yu, greater China chief economist at Citi, suggested that Beijing was concerned about “sentiment damage in case of another miss”. The bank forecasts growth of 5.7 per cent this year.While recent high-frequency data shows a quick recovery in activity, other indicators point to deeper systemic challenges. Property sales are declining year on year, albeit at a less severe rate than late last year, and many developers remain under pressure to restructure liabilities. Exports have fallen in each of the final three months of 2022, the latest available data shows.“The government was taking a very cautious approach in the face of a range of uncertainties,” said Tang Yao, associate professor of applied economics at Peking University, of the growth target. He noted that “uncertainty in the international environment” topped the list of concerns outlined by former Premier Li Keqiang, China’s number two official.Li is set to be replaced in a government reshuffle this week by Li Qiang, a close ally of President Xi Jinping.China weathered the early stages of the pandemic better than many of its peers, as high demand for its exports propped up the economy despite weaker consumption. In 2021 the country’s GDP expanded 8.1 per cent, though that figure was helped by the comparison with early 2020 when activity collapsed.

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A significant portion of that growth was also bolstered by net exports, which are now weakening as other big economies struggle to contain inflation. Tang said that while domestic consumption would rebound this year, China could be hit by a “severe” contraction in external demand.Dan Wang, chief China economist at Hang Seng Bank China, said the low target was “mainly a reflection of the declining exports”, given its share of growth in recent years. But she also pointed to “conservative” monetary policy, suggesting that the property market’s performance could be crucial to achieving the 5 per cent growth goal.“In the past, whenever China’s economy was in recession, usually credit growth will pump up, and that can drive the housing cycle to go up,” she said.“This year, even last year, there was no such intention to inflate the housing bubble.”

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The prospect of stimulus in China — policymakers’ favoured response to past bouts of weakness, notably after the 2008 global financial crisis — sits uneasily with a political push to contain high debt levels. Housing sales in China have been declining since mid-2021 following a wave of defaults among the country’s biggest developers, most notably Evergrande, though the pace of decline slowed for January and February.Beijing is reluctant to allow local governments, which rely on land sales for much of their income, to borrow more, and has not increased the limits on how much they can raise through new bond sales this year.

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Trade weakness could also affect private sector demand for credit. “The funding is often there, but private manufacturing enterprises are very reluctant to borrow to expand production because of the sharp decline in exports,” said Tang.Nonetheless credit data in January, a month in which lending often jumps around the lunar new year, showed the highest monthly bank lending on record. Analysts attributed the surge to a rise in corporate lending.The focus on the growth target — and its relevance to divining Beijing’s policy direction — may also wane in favour of other metrics as Xi prepares a sweeping overhaul of his administration that is expected to give him greater control over policy direction. The government has also set a target of 3 per cent for inflation and 5.5 per cent for unemployment, which Casanova described as “aggressive”. “The precedent of not missing the growth forecast has already been broken,” he said. “Xi has been trying to get rid of GDP targets as his overarching measure of performance for the longest time.” More