Instagram influencer Arielle Charnas has reportedly received a federal loan of around $350,000 for her fashion brand Something Navy.
She is said to have a net worth of around $2.5 million, and the brand at $45 million.
With a 1.3 million followers on her Instagram account, Charnas was set to relaunch her clothings line earlier this year which has since been postponed due to the global pandemic.
Thus, sources such as Page Six are openly questioning as to how her brand managed to receive $350,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program. Funded by the federal government, the program gave out forgivable loans to small businesses so that they keep workers employed.
Within 10 days since the program was initiated, Something Navy received between $150,000 and $350,000 in loans. According to the papers Charnas filed, the company apparently kept 25 of its employees on the paycheck due to the program; this claim has not yet been verified.
This is not the first time that Charnas has instigated controversy and fury over her actions during the pandemic. Some media sources have even called her the very example of how not to act during a global pandemic.
For instance, the influencer enraged many when she told her followers that she received a Covid-19 test in the early days of the pandemic. It turned out that this was possible due to her personal connections during a time in which public testing was greatly restricted.
After testing positive, she went into quarantine in her fancy mansion in the Hamptons along with her children and a nanny. Charnas continued to post pictures of herself while in quarantine, including one in which she was in an outside pool with the captions “Fresh air”.
Her apology video, in which she seemed overwhelmed with emotions, also received criticism for being tone-deaf. Claiming that she and her family received death threats, she said that she is not a bad person in any sense of the word.
Nevertheless, many found her apologies and actions to be incredibly inappropriate as the virus was sweeping through the US. Nordstrom, which had maintained a partnership with Charnas, announced that it will be terminating the relationship after she was deemed a ‘Covidiot’.
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Replaced!