Rapper Sean Kingston Is Sentenced to 3 1/2 Years in $1 Million Fraud Scheme
Rapper Sean Kingston was sentenced to 31/2 years in prison Friday in connection with a $1 million fraud scheme in which he used his celebrity status to obtain high-end merchandise – including a bulletproof Cadillac Escalade – from sellers whom he did not pay.
The federal government said that Kingston, 35, whose real name is Kisean Anderson, conned victims into furnishing him with a 232-inch LED television, watches and other luxury goods with promises to pay, but sent them phony wire transfers.
His mother, Janice Turner, took part in the scheme, according to investigators, who said that the two of them used Kingston’s fame and influence on social media to get their victims to forgo their due diligence.
In March, a South Florida jury convicted both of them of five criminal counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
In July, Turner, 62, was sentenced to five years in prison. She is appealing her conviction.
At his sentencing in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Kingston, who rose to fame with the 2007 hit single, “Beautiful Girls,” apologized for the scheme, which his lawyer had argued in a sentencing memorandum was a nonviolent offense that warranted a more lenient sentence.
The lawyer, Zeljka Bozanic, had suggested that Kingston should receive home confinement and described her client as “deeply remorseful.”
But after a 70-minute hearing Friday before Judge David S. Leibowitz, Kingston learned that he would be heading to prison.
“Sean is taking this as a learning experience and will continue moving forward in a positive direction,” Bozanic wrote in an email Friday
Bozanic said that most of the restitution in the scheme had already been paid back by Kingston, who had been facing a maximum possible sentence of 20 years on each of the five counts.
She said that Kingston was still weighing his legal options, including an appeal.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday about Kingston’s sentence.
During the hearing, Marc Anton, an assistant U.S. attorney, said that Kingston was hooked on his celebrity lifestyle but was living beyond his means, The Associated Press reported.
“He clearly doesn’t like to pay and relies on his celebrity status to defraud his victims,” Anton said. “He is a thief and a con man, plain and simple.”
In May 2024, a SWAT team raided Kingston’s home in Broward County, Florida, and took his mother into custody. The rapper was performing in Southern California at Fort Irwin, an Army training base in the Mojave Desert, when he was arrested.
In a lawsuit filed a few months earlier, a company that sells and installs high-end entertainment systems accused Kingston of fraud and breach of contract for failing to pay for a 232-inch television and “robust sound system” that was installed in his home in September 2023.
The company, Ver Ver Entertainment, said in the lawsuit that, in exchange for a lower down payment on the entertainment system, Kingston had promised to use his music connections to get Justin Bieber to produce promotional videos for this business.
The videos never materialized, according to the lawsuit, which said that Kingston had paid only $30,000 of the $115,000 that he owed for the system. The lawsuit is still pending.
As a teenager, Kingston rocketed to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2007 with his debut single, “Beautiful Girls,” which used a sample from Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me.”
Kingston, who was born in Florida and raised in Jamaica, has worked with a lineup of marquee singers, including Bieber, Nicki Minaj and Wyclef Jean.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.