Shawty Dred built 2 million followers by flying private, posing with a Rolls-Royce and calling everybody watching him broke. Prosecutors say food stamp money paid for all of it.
Mercedes Reshard New, 39, of Atlanta, the man behind the Shawty Dred accounts, was indicted on October 7 on 63 federal counts: 46 counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of aggravated identity theft, plus one count each of SNAP fraud and illegal transactions with access devices. Marshals arrested him in Las Vegas on October 13.
Prosecutors say that from January 2020 through July 2026, New controlled more than 350 fake SNAP accounts built on stolen identities, with EBT cards mailed to addresses all over metro Atlanta. About $4.6 million flowed into those accounts and roughly $4 million was siphoned out. He also got his own company, Shawty Dred LLC, approved as a SNAP retailer, and allegedly ran fraudulently obtained cards through its own reader for more than $660,000.
“SNAP exists to help hungry children eat. It does not exist to provide private jets to a guy like Shawty Dred.”
Vice President JD Vance, at an October 21 press conference in Cincinnati
Even getting caught did not slow it down, prosecutors say. The USDA revoked his store authorization in November 2025, and about two weeks later local police arrested him for allegedly selling SNAP benefits at a metro Atlanta store, where officers say they found 14 EBT cards issued to other people. Investigators say replacement cards were soon on their way to his addresses again.
The indictment is charges, not a conviction, and New is presumed innocent. But the jets, the Rolls and the cash stacks he posted for years are now sitting inside a federal case, and the same videos that built the following are the ones prosecutors keep quoting back.