Photo Credit: Lil Wayne for Live Nation
Lil Wayne and Chris Brown spent millions from a pandemic relief program on years of luxury spending, an investigation finds.
A new investigation from Business Insider found that some artists, including Lil Wayne and Chris Brown, spent millions from a little-known pandemic relief program to cover luxury spending. The grant was meant to support the live entertainment industry, but ended up fueling massive pandemic relief fraud. The Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans gave out around $200 billion in suspected false claims.
Grantees received up to $10 million to spend on “ordinary necessary” expenses for their entertainment businesses, contingent on them making a good-faith statement to the Small Business Administration, which oversaw the program. The statement had to prove that the grant was necessary to support the company’s ongoing operations, and that the company’s revenue had fallen by at least 25% between one quarter in 2019 and that same quarter in 2020.
But thousands of pages of accounting documents reviewed by Business Insider reveal how some wealthy musicians, including Chris Brown and Lil Wayne, spent the grants they received through the program. They reveal how artists spent millions in taxpayer funds, not toward their touring crew members and expenses, but toward their own bank accounts and luxury purchases.
“At a minimum, it smells,” said former U.S. controller general David Walker. “Whether it’s legal or not is up to a lawyer or ultimately to a court. But it sure smells.”
Senator Gary Peters, chair of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said celebrity use of the Shuttered Venues grants was “an abuse of federal resources,” and the documents’ reveal “the need for continued oversight of pandemic relief programs.” He added that pandemic relief was intended to help businesses and workers in need — “not super wealthy celebrities.”
Lil Wayne spent millions from the grant on private jet flights, clothes and accessories from luxury brands like Gucci and Balenciaga, and billed taxpayers over $175,000 for expenses related to his own brands. Chris Brown spent his $10 million from the grant on his CBE Touring company, with $5.1 million going into his own pockets. He also billed taxpayers nearly $80,000 for his 33rd birthday party.
Some musicians used the money to pay themselves, taking advantage of a grant spending category vaguely named “owner compensation.” The Small Business Administration stipulated artists could use grants paid to their loan-out company to pay themselves as long as the check was no bigger than their 2019 payout.
For example, the DJ Marshmello, whose real name is Christopher Comstock, received $9.9 million from the grant. When the Small Business Administration asked for proof of where that money went, his business manager said it all went into Comstock’s pocket. This is because in 2019, the artist made over $9.9 million from touring, so he was able to award himself the entire grant in 2020.
And artists like Lil Wayne didn’t spend all the grant money on themselves. Over $2 million of his grant went to pay off a debt to his former manager, Cortez Bryant. All in all, around $5.3 million went to managers, accountants, and attorneys — which is still more than 13 times the amount he paid his touring crew.
The Small Business Administration said in September it had recouped $43 million worth of grants, but that amount hadn’t increased since July. Strangely, it’s not clear how. A team was created to recover wrongfully awarded grants, but an organizational chart suggests that as of September, no staff had been assigned to it. Public records suggest $6 billion worth of grants remain under review for compliance with program rules.
