A Georgia man has been sentenced to eight years in prison for using stolen credit cards to live lavishly in hotels while claiming to be with the Wu-Tang Clan.
via: NY Daily News
Walker Washington, 53, was one of two rappers running the elaborate scam, which unraveled in November 2019 after hotel workers in Augusta called the police to report a group that had walked out on a $39,000 tab. Co-defendant Aaron Barnes-Burpo, a 29-year-old Florida man, was sentenced in March to seven years in prison.
The impostors also told their victims they were affiliated with the production company Roc Nation, and they recruited homeless people to work as their bodyguards, according to prosecutors.
“These two flim-flam artists and their phony entourage lived large for several weeks by scamming hospitality providers,” said U.S. Attorney David Estes, of the Southern District of Georgia.
Washington and Barnes-Burpo admitted in court that they used fraudulent and stolen credit cards to rent limousines and defraud hotels, caterers and production studios, authorities said. The pair traveled in a Rolls-Royce Phantom that was rented from A-National Limousine, which lost nearly $60,000, and used at least two studios that reported a loss of more than $17,000, prosecutors said.
The brazen scheme ran for at least two months in multiple Georgia cities, including Atlanta, August, Macon and Nashville.
Washington’s sentence of 100 months in federal prison will be followed by three years of supervised release. Both men were also ordered to pay nearly $300,000 to 19 businesses he defrauded in the scheme.
“These two scammers will have plenty of time to figure out if their few weeks of unearned fame was worth several years in prison,” FBI Special Agent Chris Hacker said in a statement. “With this sentence, law enforcement and the victims of their scam, have spoken loudly that we won’t tolerate anyone who takes anything they do not earn or deserve.”
Reports say 28-year-old Aaron Barnes-Burpo of Crestview and one other man organized a group of men and women who pretended to be with the Roc Nation production company and the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan to use fraudulent and stolen credit cards. https://t.co/XJXVWh61OG pic.twitter.com/n9197jmigS
— WEAR ABC 3 (@weartv) February 13, 2020
Aaron Barnes-Burpo and Walker Washington have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud & aggravated identity theft after posing as rappers with Wu-Tang and Roc Nation. They scammed Atlanta-area hotels out of more than $100K with stolen & fake credit cards pic.twitter.com/AQWqksFuo9
— SOHH (@sohh) February 13, 2020
Washington’s co-defendant, Aaron Barnes-Burpo, 29, of Crestview, Florida, was previously sentenced to seven years after pleading guilty to the same charge.
