• Fugees rapper Pras Michel has been sentenced to 14 years in jail for a 2023 conviction on costs of conspiracy and performing as an unregistered agent of a overseas authorities.
• Pras was first indicted with making use of funds discovered to be stolen from a Malaysian sovereign wealth towards pressuring a number of U.S. presidents to drop the investigation towards his co-conspirator, the Malaysian financier Jho Low, and extradite a Chinese language dissident.
• Erica Dumas, a consultant for Pras, informed EW, "Whereas in the present day marks a tough second, it’s not the top of his story or his legacy."

Hip-hop legend and Fugees star Pras Michel goes to jail.

The musician acquired a 14-year sentence on Thursday following his 2023 conviction on costs of conspiracy and performing as an unregistered agent of a overseas authorities.

Erica Dumas, a consultant for Pras, famous to Leisure Weekly that her consumer has additionally been ordered to serve three years of probation following the completion of his sentence, and is ready to give up by Jan. 27, 2026. Dumas added that the decide within the case, D.C. federal court docket Choose Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, known as Pras "effectively educated however very conceited. I really feel you don’t have any regret."

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"Pras has spent his profession breaking limitations and defying expectations," Dumas acknowledged. "Whereas in the present day marks a tough second, it’s not the top of his story or his legacy. He’s profoundly grateful for the continued assist of those that consider in him as he prepares for what lies forward."

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The 53-year-old musician, born Prakazrel Samuel Michel, caught his first wave of authorized bother in 2019. The four-count indictment unsealed that Might alleged that in 2012, the disgraced Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, referred to as Jho Low, transferred $21.6 million to accounts belonging to Pras, directing him to covertly apply the cash into presidential campaigns.

Pras did simply that, funneling roughly $865,000 by way of straw donors into the marketing campaign of a candidate later revealed as Barack Obama. That donation turned the topic of a false report submitted to the Federal Election Fee by a presidential joint fundraising committee.

After investigators started trying into that exercise, however earlier than the 2019 indictment, Pras and Low engaged in one other legal conspiracy to affect President Donald Trump and his Justice Division to drop the investigation into Low and his co-conspirators. That was the topic of a 2021 superseding indictment, which discovered the thousands and thousands Low directed to Pras have been stolen from the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Growth Berhad.

Pras was additionally accused of utilizing this cash to create a back-channel marketing campaign to extradite the Chinese language dissident Guo Wengui again to China from the USA. The musician was convicted by a federal grand jury in April 2023.

Michel and Low met in 2006. Their relationship led to Low serving to finance movies like The Wolf of Wall Avenue, which ended up dragging Leonardo DiCaprio into court docket to testify within the 2023 trial. It was revealed throughout that trial that Low's plundering of the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund exceeded $4 billion. Low's whereabouts have been unknown since 2016.

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