Scammer Uses Chance The Rapper’s Name To Swindle $36K

Chance The Rapper’s is known for his easygoing and carefree attitude. It isn’t uncommon for artists to be the victims of elaborate schemes that con people out of money and it seems scammers had Chance The Rapper in their cross-sights next.

According to a recent report by CBS News, Chance The Rapper’s name has been used by a scammer for nearly a decade. Chicago banking professionals and sisters Ibi and Lulu Cole were swindled out of $36,000 by a man named Jeffrey Washington.

Apparently, Jeffrey claimed that “CEDA [the Community and Economic Development Association] and Chance the Rapper were working together in a program to pay off mortgages and other financial obligations for residents in the area, including light bill, gas bill, insurance, car insurance, telephone bills and things like that.” He reportedly told Lulu that they needed to give away $600K in charitable donations immediately.

After their conversation, Jeffrey managed to get Lulu to trust him. Lulu and her sister had the had the man pay a bill, and when they checked, it showed a payment was made. Then, the man asked if she had a mortgage and Lulu brought up her rental property that still had an outstanding balance of $45K.

Lulu said, “[The bank] asked if he had authorization to interact with the representative for that call only,” She added that Jeffrey “knew very specific terms to ask or to say to the representative so that he could gain access to making payments on these accounts.” Lulu’s sister Ibi thought it was a scam but the bank claimed the payment from Washington for the mortgage went through.

Soon, there were payments made for Ibi’s mortgage of $100K and emails and phone calls to companies confirmed payments. Washington then proceeded to ask for money from the ladies, and in turn, one gave him $9K and the other $27K. The sisters decided to trust him because he just saved them hundreds of thousands in bills. 

However, days later institutions were calling the women to tell them there were problems with their payments but it was too late, Jeffrey was long gone.  Police confirmed that Washington has been using that alias since at least 2014 and usually scammed people for $500 to almost $7,000 each time. Following the incident Ibi said,

“We were in the middle of building an afterschool community center. And the funds that I had set aside to build that community center. I’m no longer going to be able to build it,” 

We advise our viewers to stay alert as scammers have been running wild recently. Just days earlier T-Pain warned his fans that someone is scamming people by pretending to be him. Meanwhile, stay tuned to Thirsty for future updates. You can watch a segment about the scam below.

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