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Mr. Kingston, who is best known for his 2007 hit single “Beautiful Girls,” and his mother were charged with defrauding sellers of high-end vehicles, jewelry and other goods, prosecutors said.
A jury in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., convicted the rapper Sean Kingston and his mother on Friday in a scheme involving more than $1 million worth of fraud, according to prosecutors.
Mr. Kingston, 35, whose real name is Kisean Anderson, and his mother, Janice Turner, 62, both of Southwest Ranches, Fla., had been charged with five counts of wire fraud.
They essentially took possession of high-end vehicles, jewelry and other goods by pretending to have paid for them through the use of fraudulent documents, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida.
Each faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on each count, prosecutors said. The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced in July.
Ms. Turner, who testified during the trial, was taken into federal custody on Friday. Her lawyer, Humberto Dominguez, said on Saturday morning that they will appeal the verdict.
Mr. Kingston, who did not testify, was allowed to post bond of a home valued at $500,000 and $200,000 in cash, but will remain in home detention with electronic monitoring. His lawyer, Zeljka Bozanic, said on Saturday that she was thankful that Mr. Kingston was allowed to remain out on bond but added that they will also file an appeal.
As a 17-year-old, Mr. Kingston became known for his debut single, “Beautiful Girls,” which used a sample from Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me.” It was ranked at No. 1 for four weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2007.
“He spent his childhood in Jamaica, which gave him his stage name and his command of patois,” the critic Kelefa Sanneh wrote in The New York Times in 2007, “but his version of thug love (‘Girl, I know it’s rough, but come with me/We can take a trip to the ’hood’) makes it sound as if he’s trying too hard, or not hard enough.”
According to prosecutors, Mr. Kingston and Ms. Turner “unjustly enriched themselves” by falsely claiming that they had executed bank wire or other monetary transfers as payment for vehicles, jewelry and other high-end items when no such transfers had taken place.
It added up to a property haul of more than $1 million, prosecutors said.
Mr. Kingston and Ms. Turner were accused of an “organized scheme to defraud” establishments, including a car dealership and a jeweler, of more than $50,000, according to arrest warrants for them.
Mr. Kingston and Ms. Turner were also accused of stealing a Cadillac Escalade from the dealership and $480,000 in jewelry from an individual, according to the warrants.
Ms. Turner pleaded guilty in 2006 to charges of bank fraud and filing fraudulent loan applications and was sentenced to 16 months in prison, according to court records. She was released in March 2007.
source: nytimes.com
