Los Angeles, California - A college football player was taken into custody on federal charges alleging he orchestrated a scheme that fraudulently sought hundreds of thousands of dollars in COVID-related unemployment benefits.
Abdul-Malik McClain, 22, who currently attends school in Jackson, Mississippi, surrendered to federal law enforcement this morning in Los Angeles before being arraigned this afternoon in United States District Court.
A federal grand jury indictment returned on December 16 and unsealed this afternoon charges McClain with 10 counts of mail fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft. McClain, who was residing in Los Angeles in 2020 during the alleged scheme, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and was ordered released on a $20,000 bond.
According to the indictment, while a member of his university’s football team, McClain organized and assisted a group of other football players in filing fraudulent claims for unemployment benefits, including under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program established by Congress in response to the pandemic’s economic fallout. The indictment alleges that the claims – which were filed with the California Employment Development Department (EDD), the administrator of the state’s unemployment insurance (UI) benefit program – contained false information about the football players’ supposed prior employment, pandemic-related job loss, and job-seeking efforts in California.
The indictment alleges that...
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