{"id":8647,"date":"2025-11-20T22:47:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T22:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/fugees-rapper-pras-michel-sentenced-to-14-years-in-prison\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T22:47:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T22:47:27","slug":"fugees-rapper-pras-michel-sentenced-to-14-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/fugees-rapper-pras-michel-sentenced-to-14-years-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Fugees Rapper Pras Michel Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tFugees rapper Pras Michel was sentenced Thursday (Nov. 20) to 14 years in prison following his conviction on illegal foreign lobbying and conspiracy charges.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rapper, who rose to fame alongside his bandmates Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean, was found guilty in 2023 on federal accusations that he orchestrated a \u201cforeign influence campaign\u201d to get the U.S. to drop an investigation into fugitive Malaysian financier Jho Low.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAt a hearing Thursday in D.C. federal court, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentenced Michel to 14 years in prison, followed by three years\u2019 probation. He was already ordered last month to forfeit a whopping $64 million allegedly linked to the scheme.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an exclusive statement to Billboard<\/em>, Michel\u2019s spokeswoman Erica Dumas<\/strong> said: \u201cPras has spent his career breaking barriers and defying expectations. While today marks a difficult moment, it is not the end of his story or his legacy. He is profoundly grateful for the continued support of those who believe in him as he prepares for what lies ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tProsecutors had sought a \u201csevere\u201d sentence for a man who they said had \u201cbetrayed his country for money.\u201d In court filings, they said that an average sentence for others convicted of a similar-sized financial scheme had been more than two decades: \u201cThe Court\u2019s sentence should reflect the seriousness of Michel\u2019s offenses,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

\n\tMichel\u2019s attorneys, on the other hand, had called for a far lighter sentence of only 36 months. They said the government was seeking a type of sentence \u201ctypically reserved for terrorists who murder innocents and the heads of the largest Mexican drug cartels.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Pras<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tMichel will surrender to authorities on Jan. 27.<\/p>\n

\n\tComposed of Hill, Jean and Michel, the Fugees rose to fame in the 1990s with hits like \u201cKilling Me Softly,\u201d \u201cReady or Not\u201d and \u201cFu-Gee-La.\u201d After splitting up in 1998, the three each had successful solo careers and mostly stayed separate until recent years, during which they\u2019ve attempted multiple reunion tours.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2019, Michel was hit with sweeping federal criminal charges over accusations that he funneled money from Low, the mastermind of the billion-dollar 1MDB embezzlement scheme, to a lobbying campaign aimed at getting the first Trump administration to drop its investigation into the disgraced financier. He was also accused of secretly funneling Low\u2019s money to Barack Obama\u2019s 2012 presidential campaign, and of later trying to influence an extradition case on behalf of China.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn April 2023, following a trial that included testimony from actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Michel was convicted on 10 counts, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.<\/p>\n

\n\tMichel later sought a re-trial on the grounds that his ex-lawyer, David Kenner<\/strong>, botched his defense by using an unproven artificial intelligence (AI) tool to craft closing arguments. That motion was later denied, though Kenner eventually pleaded guilty to a criminal contempt charge over allegations that he leaked grand jury materials to reporters ahead of the trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tMichel\u2019s attorneys will now launch his appeal of both the sentence and the underlying convictions; such appeals can take months or years, and typically face an uphill climb to reverse a conviction.<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fugees rapper Pras Michel was sentenced Thursday (Nov. 20) to 14 years in prison following his conviction on illegal foreign lobbying and conspiracy charges. The rapper, who rose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3644,3647,3646,223,2278,3974,148],"class_list":["post-8647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-fugees","tag-michel","tag-pras","tag-prison","tag-rapper","tag-sentenced","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}