Once-missing New Orleans chef indicted for alleged wire fraud, stealing of government funds

BATON ROUGE, La. (WVUE) – A New Orleans chef who gained notoriety during a well-publicized disappearance two years ago has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Baton Rouge for allegedly stealing government funds intended for low-income families, according to court documents.

Demietriek Scott, 49, was charged March 20 with five counts of wire fraud and single counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, theft of government funds and conspiracy to commit theft of government funds.

Scott’s alleged accomplice in the scheme — 51-year-old Romney Manuel of Prairieville — was indicted on the same charges by the federal grand jury.

According to court documents, Manuel worked in April 2020 as a program consultant for the Louisiana Department of Education in the Office of Early Childhood Operations. Manuel’s duties included certifying childcare providers for the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), a federally-funded initiative that enables low-income families to access childcare while they work by directly paying childcare providers subsidies for qualifying children.

Type III Early Learning Centers — childcare centers that serve seven or more children unrelated to the owner — are one type of provider that receives CCAP payments after they are licensed by the Louisiana Department of Education.

Federal prosecutors allege that Scott and Manuel conspired to defraud the US government out of $74,250 in LaCAP grants “by making a nonexistent childcare provider appear to be operational.”

They allegedly called the fake childcare center “Nanny Learning” and “Nanny’s Learning,” applied for grants with applications signed by “D. Scott,” routed direct deposits of the grants to Scott’s own Capital One Bank account and divided the ill-gotten proceeds, the court documents say.

Prosecutors said they recovered text and email exchanges between the defendants as they completed steps toward their goal, along with evidence that Manuel altered internal spreadsheets and tried to dissuade fellow LDE employees from investigating when the abnormality of two childcare centers with the same address was noticed.

Investigators said the scheme ran from April 2020 to March 29, 2021. Manuel and Scott were arrested by Louisiana State Police in June 2021 and bonded out. There had been no update on their case until the federal grand jury indictment was handed up last Thursday.

It was two years later — in June 2023 — that Scott was reported missing, and then dead, before reappearing on live television during a Fox 8 report from his family’s Ninth Ward house.

Missing New Orleans chef turns up alive after death report

Family members said they had not heard from Scott in two weeks before they reported him as missing to New Orleans police. Scott operates Chef Scott’s Creole BBQ food truck and failed to show up at that year’s Zydeco Fest, where he was among the scheduled vendors.

On the morning of June 12, a dead body was found under the France Street bridge near Florida Avenue and family members told reporters that the Orleans Parish Coroner’s office had given them a preliminary notification that the corpse was Scott’s.

But shortly before 4 p.m. that day, as reporters gathered near the family’s house to report on Scott’s death, the missing chef suddenly walked up, very much alive.

“I’ve been around,” Scott said. “I’ve been around. I essentially just needed some time for myself. … Life caves in on you sometimes, and that’s just what happened.

“I appreciate (the concern). I didn’t know that was a thing. … I just needed to get away from everything and just stay in a little while. … I just needed to sit still … and get a moment for me.”