An aspiring rapper in Baltimore was arrested and is facing up to 20 years in prison for allegedly spending $4.1 million on a company credit card to fund his struggling rap career.
31-year-old Chad Arrington, who goes by the rap name Chad Focus, is accused of charging $4.1 million in unauthorized purchases to his company American Express card, The Baltimore Sun reports. Arrington reportedly gained access to the American Express card through his position as a Search Engine Optimization specialist at investment publisher Money Map Press, a subsidiary of the local financial publishing giant The Agora Companies.
The struggling artist allegedly used his company credit card to pay for audio equipment, artificial streams on Spotify, social media followers, and even a feature by T Pain. Under the name “Chad Focus”, the rapper also paid for billboard advertisements across the country, including a massive advertisement in the middle of Times Square that he purchased through Focus Music Entertainment LLC — a company he formed to push his music.
The bizarre and enormous Times Square billboard for CHAD FOCUS, “#1 ARTIST IN THE WORLD” pic.twitter.com/aa9sx1piJG
— Alex Weinberg (@_alexweinberg) October 17, 2018
Chad Focus was able to release one hit song in 2017 titled “Dance With Me”. The song landed on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart at No. 38 in 2018 and that is when he went on to release a remix featuring Grammy Award-winning artist T-Pain — which he allegedly funded through the use of his company credit card between January 2015 and August 2018, HipHopDX reports.
On his Instagram page he tells his 100k+ paid followers how to fund their own music career off of $300,000.
According to the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office, Arrington also used the card to make $1.5 million in purchases with businesses owned from unnamed accomplices. The unnamed accomplices would allegedly send Harrington back hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash that he blew on career including $100,000 on promotional “FOCUS” hats as well as an additional $125,000 in flights and tickets for his own shows.
Harrington was indicted by a federal grand jury on May 29 and is being held without bond. The now former rapper will remain in jail until his scheduled hearing on Friday, June 7 where he faces federal charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.
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