SEAN KINGSTON SENTENCED TO 3.5 YEARS IN PRISON OVER FRAUD SCHEME

Singer Sean Kingston was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison over his $1 million wire fraud trial in South Florida, according to the Associated Press and NBC South Florida.

The 35-year-old, whose real name is Kisean Anderson, was initially found guilty of wire fraud in March alongside his mother, Janice Turner. In July, she was sentenced to five years in prison and three years probation.

In March, both were found guilty on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and four counts of wire fraud. Each charge carried a maximum of 20 years in prison. Earlier this week, Kingston and his lawyers asked the judge to consider home confinement due to the non-violent nature of the crime and the fact that Kingston had paid most of the victims back.

Kingston is best known for his 2007 hit “Beautiful Girls,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100. Throughout his career, he released four albums and collaborated with artists including Bieber, Nicki Minaj and Chris Brown.

Kingston and Turner were arrested in May 2024 on theft charges following a SWAT raid on his South Florida mansion. The raids came after Kingston was hit with a lawsuit for allegedly not paying for luxury items.

Two months later, the pair were indicted in Miami federal court and charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and four counts of wire fraud. Prosecutors accused them of defrauding victim sellers of high-end specialty vehicles, jewelry and other goods bought with fraudulent documents. They stated that the pair would make payments through banks that never actually went through, allowing them to accrue more than $1 million in property.

During the trial, Turner admitted to falsifying wires to protect her son from scammers by delaying payments for luxury items. Kingston declined to testify. A key piece of evidence in the trial was a text that Kingston sent to his mother that read, “I told you to make [a] fake receipt” followed by “so it [looks] like the transfer will be there in a couple [of] days.”

A Fort Lauderdale jeweler Moshe Edery testified that he had given Kingston an Audemars Piguet watch for $285,000 in exchange for introducing him to other celebrities. After Kingston allegedly provided a screenshot of a falsified wire transfer, Edery was fired from his job and blacklisted.

Source - Variety