Popular South Florida influencer Scott Lee Huss exemplifies why Miami’s reputation as the world’s con artist capital may never fade.
According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Huss, 28, who describes himself on social media as an artist, musician, visionary, and entrepreneur, was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud. Huss’ white-collar crime spree began when he falsified an application for $609,000 in COVID relief assistance and finished with him impersonating a foreign diplomat and forging fake checks to pay for a Lamborghini Urus.
Huss, known to his 3.2 million Instagram followers as @jryako, does not appear to have posted anything since February 15, two weeks before a federal grand jury indicted him. Prior to that, he displayed images of himself in numerous locations across the world, dressed in beautiful clothes and flashy jewelry and frequently near other symbols of wealth. (He also used the handle @scottyhuss on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.)
Court documents suggest that the picture was, at least in part, based on deception.
Huss applied for and received six loans from the Small Business Administration through his companies Apex Marketing Inc., based in a Biscayne Boulevard apartment; Leadecom, based where his father lives in Port Charlotte (on the Gulf Coast north of Fort Myers); Supreme Sociedad Anonima LLC, also based in a Miami apartment; and Temple of Tao Inc., also in Port Charlotte.
Instead of investing in his company through business expenses or staff salaries, he spent the money on bitcoin and expensive automobiles.
Huss, for example, paid $148,000 for a 2019 Lamborghini Urus SUV in September 2021, with financing from a Boston-area company covering almost $120,000 of the cost. In 2023, he mailed phony payment vouchers that seemed to be checks to cover the Lambo loan and another on a Mercedes-Benz whose model the federal charging documents do not specify.
Huss was so creative that he pretended to be a foreign diplomat. According to WSVN 7News, Sunny Isles Beach police stopped his girlfriend earlier this year after she disregarded traffic signs in a crash-prone area. Both she and Huss, who was a passenger in the car, tried unsuccessfully to claim sovereign immunity by pointing to diplomat license plates.
Law enforcement officials discovered that Huss’ credentials, like other elements of his life, were false.
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