Baby Blue from Pretty Ricky explained on “The Hollywood Group Chat” with Meghan James how he unknowingly got caught up in the PPP scam that sent him to jail for a year.
Baby Blue said he had a thriving mask business during the early outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States.
He said he made a quarter million dollars from his mask business before Donald Trump, the President at the time, told people they could go outside as long as they mask up.
He said he doesn’t know why the mask stopped selling after Donald Trump said what he said, but he thinks people just started going outside without wearing a mask.
He said he was trying to upsell his mask business to a football agent and he got caught up in a PPP scam.
…So when the Millenium Tour hits… Okay, we go and we perform, Madison Square Garden, sold out… Okay, and then we come home.
We did like a spot weekend date, like, a Friday or Saturday or something like that.
Like, North Carolina, um, Madison Square Garden and then we came back home, and we was finna go back out on the weekend.
So we discuss it, we like, ‘You know what let’s buy some Sprinter vans instead of us doing the tour busses let’s just keep it… Like, let’s everybody get a Sprinter so we can, like, move around in the markets.
…So I”m at the dealership buying a Sprinter, my phone ring. One of the exects from the record label calling me, he’s like, ‘Yo Blue, what’s going on?…’
Immediately, I’m trying to upsell him on the mask. I’m like, ‘Yo! I just did a quarter mil off these mask, like… Let me make one of your football players or something a hand sanitizer website or some gloves.’ I say, ‘Man, I’m at the dealership right now bout to cash out on a Sprinter.’
He’s like, ‘Nah Blue, don’t spend your money.’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, we can do that. Let’s talk about it, but don’t spend your money. You can use our money.’
Now this a football agent. They got an agency that fronts the football players money during the offseason.
So, let’s say when the season ends, and they done ran through their cash, they might need a million dollars. The football agency says, ‘Aye, here go the million, but you gotta give us back 1.2 million, 1.3 million, right so…
I’m already understanding this business because I”m consulting the football agency for the football player’s record label so I already know how they business structured.
So when he say, ‘Blue, you can just do it with us.’ I’m like, ‘Alright man, cool.’ I said, ‘You sure!’ He said, ‘Yeah, don’t use your money for that. Keep your money man, we got it.’
…So, know I’m like… I go home, phone ring… It’s one o’clock in the morning, he like, ‘You still need that?’ I say, ‘Yeah, run it, man, cool.’
That was it. Two minutes… not even two minutes like 30 seconds, hung up the phone. Well, he say, ‘Send this over here, send that over there’… I sent it, hang up.
I’m thinking 100% they bout to do me the loan through the football agency. So now, when the bread hit, I go to my accountant. My accountant is like, ‘What’s this 200 something thousand dollar chunk missing? I said, ‘Oh I gave that to the dude, he did the paperwork whatever…
I don’t know who was the mastermind over there, you feel me?… That ain’t my business. But, at the same time that’s how I ended up in that sh*t, you know what I”m saying?…
Like, me trying to put somebody else on another play, you feel me?… And, they just dragged me into that sh*t.
Blue said he got caught up because they messed his paperwork up, and he became a part of a $24 million PPP loan scandal.
Blue was charged in October 2020 for filing fraudulent loan applications for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). He pleaded guilty on August 4, 2021, and he was sentenced to 20 months, but his sentence got reduced to 12 months.
He was released from prison on February 8, 2023, and he is still paying restitution.
Watch the clip of the Baby Blue interview from “The Hollywood GroupChat” below:
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