Sean Kingston and his mother were indicted in Miami federal court today in connection with a $1 million wire fraud scheme. If convicted, both face up to 20 years in prison for each of the six charged counts.
The 34-year-old singer, born Kisean Anderson, appeared in court with his 61-year-old mother Janice Turner after their arrest in May. Today, they were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and five counts of wire fraud charges from their involvement in a scheme to defraud victim sellers of high-end specialty vehicles, jewelry and other goods purchased via fraudulent documents.
The United States Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Florida stated that the defendants “unjustly enriched themselves by falsely representing that they had executed bank wire or other monetary payment transfers.” According to the Office, the alleged scheme involved making payments through banks that never actually went through, resulting in them accruing an excess of $1 million in property.
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Kingston was initially arrested in California on May 24 on theft charges following a SWAT raid of his South Florida mansion and the arrest of his mother. The arrest came without incident a few hours after his mother’s arrest during the raid of his lavish Fort Lauderdale suburb home.
The raids were conducted following a lawsuit filed against Kingston for allegedly not paying for luxury items. Meanwhile, his mother has been embroiled in legal issues in the past over false loan applications and bank fraud.
Kingston is best known for his 2007 No. 1 hit song “Beautiful Girls” as well as collaborations with Justin Bieber. An attorney for the individual who is suing Kingston over the unpaid items noted that Kingston uses “basically a script, he says that he works with Justin Bieber, and obviously puts on a big show here, this is a rental house, he doesn’t own it, and he lures people using his celebrity into having them release things without him paying for it and then he simply never pays.”
