Pras Hit with $65 Million Forfeiture Request Before January Sentencing
Pras Michel, who many best know as part of the hip-hop group The Fugees, is grappling with circumstances beyond his prison sentence. He has been convicted on criminal conspiracy charges and is awaiting sentencing next month, dangling the possibility of life in prison at which Pras is set to appear; yet, according to this week’s developments, this rapper’s brushes with the law have not even scratched the surface.
According to reports, federal prosecutors sought to have Pras forfeit nearly $65 million in a separate legal action on Thursday, December 19th. They filed a motion in court, asking a judge to enforce a forfeiture order totaling $64,923,226.40. This amount relates to Pras’s illegal acts organized by Jho Low, a Malaysian financier. This part of the sum is Pras’s share of the much more significant $104.24 million payment by Low, ostensibly given to officials, as earlier claimed, to bribe government officials to block and deter investigations of Low’s suspected embezzlement from the 1MDB investment fund, among others.
However, this was already accounted for in a separate case in 2018, which dealt with almost $37 million of it. This left nearly $65 million as the current target.
It’s currently anyone’s guess whether the judge may agree to the government’s forfeiture request.
Pras is scheduled to be sentenced on January 29. Federal prosecutors advocate for a “significant” and “extended” prison term. In contrast, the rapper himself has requested a more lenient sentence of 36 months in prison, alongside two years of supervised release.
