RapperSean Kingston’slegal troubleshave reached their conclusion — and the outcome means he’s unlikely to see any “Beautiful Girls” soon. The 35-year-old artist, born Kisean Paul Anderson, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in South Florida on Friday for his role in a $1 million fraud scheme that spanned nearly a year. Kingston and his mother,Janice Eleanor Turner, were each convicted in March of conspiracy tocommit wire fraud and four counts of wire fraud. Turner received a five-year prison sentence last month. The Grammy-nominated singer first rose to fame at just 17 with the 2007 chart-topping single “Beautiful Girls,” which sampledBen E. King’sclassic “Stand By Me.”
Why Was Sean Kingston Sent to Jail?
According to the prosecutors on the case, Kingston and Turner were operating the scheme between April 2023 and March 2024, using social media to lure sellers of luxury goods. The pair would negotiate high-end purchases, invite the sellers to Kingston’s Florida homes, andpromise to promote their productson his platforms, but when it came time to pony up the case, investigators say the pair of them sent fake wire transfer receipts for items like a bulletproof Escalade, luxury watches, and even a massive 19-foot LED television.
The whole thing fell apart, unsurprisingly,when the payments never arrived. Victims, often strung along with repeated excuses, sometimes received partial restitution only after turning to lawyers or law enforcement. Kingston and Turner were finally arrested in May 2024 following a SWAT raid on Kingston’s rented mansion in suburban Fort Lauderdale. Turner was taken into custody at the scene, while Kingston was arrested the same day at Fort Irwin, a California Army training base, where he had been performing.
Authorities presented evidence showing the pair used fake wire transfer receipts as proof of payment, and the most pivotal piece of evidence in the case was a text message 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.”
Kingston’s attorney sought to distance the rapper’s celebrity persona from his financial dealings, portraying him as “a gentle person who went from poverty to sudden fame” and who “had no understanding of business or awareness of what was in his bank account", a claim that was met with little sympathy from the jury on the case, who took three hours to make the decision. In addition to the federal charges, Kingston and Turner are also facing separate state fraud charges.
