Sean Kingston has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison by a Florida court for a $1m wire fraud scheme, according to NBC South Florida.
The 35-year-old singer, born Kisean Anderson, was found guilty in a South Florida court in March alongside his mother, Janice Turner, for accruing about $1m worth of luxury items through falsified payments that never cleared. Turner was sentenced in July to five years in prison with three years of probation.
The two were initially arrested in May 2024 on theft charges after a Swat raid on Kingston’s South Florida mansion. Investigators told the court that Kingston used social media from April 2023 to March 2024 to arrange purchases of luxury items, and invited sellers to his Florida homes with the promise to feature them and their merchandise on his accounts. When it came time to pay for the items, such as a bulletproof Cadillac Escalade or an Audemars Piguet watch, Kingston or his mother texted the sellers fake wire receipts.
During her trial, Turner admitted to falsifying wires for her son, which she claimed was an effort to protect him from scammers by delaying payments for luxury items. Kingston refused to testify. As evidence, the prosecution presented texts from Kingston 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”.
Before the judge delivered his sentence, Kingston apologized and said he had learned from his actions, according to the Associated Press. His lawyer had previously asked the judge for home confinement, due to the non-violent nature of the crime and the fact that Kingston had paid back most of the people he defrauded.
Born in Miami and raised in his parents’ native Kingston, Jamaica, the singer remains most famous for his 2007 single Beautiful Girls, which topped the Billboard charts. He has released four albums and collaborated with the likes of Nicki Minaj and Chris Brown. In 2011, he scored a modest hit with Justin Bieber on the track Eenie Meenie.
According to federal court records, Turner pleaded guilty in 2006 to bank fraud for stealing over $160,000, and served nearly 18 months in prison. Turner and Kingston have been sued multiple times for failure to pay for luxury items, most recently by a Florida entertainment systems company in February 2024.
