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Riverside, California – In the latest example of pandemic-era fraud, a 30-year-old woman from Eastvale, California, has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison for a wide-ranging scheme that siphoned off more than $1.7 million in COVID relief funds — all while advertising her services on Instagram.
Jasmine Unique Mallard-McCarter, who went by “JassyMC” online, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud earlier this year. On Monday, a federal judge in Los Angeles sentenced her to 84 months behind bars and ordered her to pay full restitution.
McCarter’s scheme was ambitious, messy, and deeply cynical. At a time when millions of Americans were scrambling to make rent and keep their businesses afloat, prosecutors say she was building a fraud-for-hire business out of stolen identities, fake documents, and fraudulent applications.
She didn’t keep it quiet, either. Using social media handles like “EliteRealEstateandBusiness,” McCarter openly marketed herself as the “Jass of All Trades,” promising clients everything from illegitimate access to state DMV systems to forged IRS tax forms and bogus disability placards. She charged fees for filing grant applications, unemployment insurance claims, and for supplying fake pay stubs and driver’s licenses — all designed to trick overburdened government systems into handing out benefits.
Some of the fraud relied on stolen personal information. Other times, McCarter helped people who were never eligible for benefits game the system. The fraud spanned multiple programs, including federal small business loans, California’s small business COVID-19 grants, and Los Angeles County aid programs.
Though pandemic relief fraud is hardly new — it’s become an unfortunate hallmark of the COVID-19 era — the scale and audacity of McCarter’s case stood out. Her sentencing comes as federal authorities continue a broader crackdown on pandemic-related crime. The Justice Department launched a COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force in 2021, and California is home to one of the three national strike teams focused on pandemic fraud.
While some of the funds McCarter helped steal have been recovered, the damage — both financial and symbolic — lingers. The relief programs she exploited were designed to serve those in crisis. Her case underscores how easily that mission was hijacked, and how brazenly some people treated a public emergency as a get-rich-quick opportunity.
The message from prosecutors is clear: just because the chaos of the pandemic made fraud easier, doesn’t mean the consequences won’t eventually arrive. For McCarter, those consequences will play out over the next seven years in a federal prison.
