Oakland rapper Kafani, who gained national attention after being shot during a music video shoot in 2013 that left him paralyzed, was recently arrested in a multi-million dollar fraud ring. with three others: Susan Arreola-Martin, Christopher Pool, and Tyrone Jones. They are accused of stealing identities from various victims and using their identities to obtain a refinance loan, using the victim’s property as collateral.
According to The Mercury News, the group took out a $325,000 loan on one victim, and in another instance, they ordered nearly one million in gold bars from Beverly Hills. The gold bar order alerted the F.B.I., who sent $300 in silver bars to a location in Vallejo where $24,000 worth of gold was to be delivered. They staked out the location and saw Tyrone Jones retrieve the bars in a car registered to Kafani's brother.
Kafani's phone was also wiretapped, where they heard him talking to another person about getting an elderly person to impersonate a victim to get a loan. He was heard saying, "We good, we just need a granny," before getting Arreola-Martin, 69, to impersonate the female victim to obtain the loan.
Kafani had his first court appearance this week, and he was released on $250,000 bail. When he was arrested, Kafani was on supervised release after serving a 39-month sentence for a 2015 conviction of conspiring to commit wire fraud.
Source: The Mercury News
