Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel A member of the Fugitives was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in prison in a case in which he was found guilty of illegally funneling millions of dollars in foreign donations to former President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign.
Michel, 52, declined to speak in court before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentenced him.
In April 2023, a federal jury found Michel guilty of 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. Court in Washington, D.C. included testimony from actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Justice Department prosecutors said federal sentencing guidelines recommended a life sentence for Michel, who they said “betrayed his country for money” and “lyed unapologetically and ruthlessly to further his agenda.”
“His sentence must reflect the breadth and depth of his crimes, his indifference to the risks to his country and the extent of his greed,” he said. they wrote.
Defense lawyer Peter Seidenberg said his client's 14-year sentence was “completely disproportionate to the crime”. Michel will appeal his conviction and sentence, his lawyer said.
Seidenberg recommended a sentence of three years in prison. A life sentence would be an “absurdly high” sentence for Michel, given that it is typically reserved for deadly terrorists and drug cartel leaders, Michel's lawyers said in a court document.
“The Government's position is repulsive to Inspector Javert and, if anything, simply illustrates how easily the Guidelines can be manipulated to produce absurd results and how ill-equipped they are, at least in this case, to deliver a fair and just verdict,” they wrote.
Graham Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Michel, a Brooklyn native whose parents immigrated to the United States from Haiti, was a founding member of the Fugees along with childhood friends Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean. Their hip-hop group has won two Grammy Awards and sold tens of millions of albums.
Michel received more than $120 million from Malaysia Low Taek Not Jolie Jo — also known as Jho Low — and funneled some of that money through straw donors to the Obama campaign.
Michel said during the trial that he viewed Lowe's payments as “free money” and accepted millions over nine months to help Lowe set up a photo op with Obama. He said under oath at the time that no one told him that such political donation payments might be illegal or violate campaign finance laws.
The Justice Department also accused Michel of serving as an unregistered foreign agent for China, alleging that in 2017 he tried to convince the Trump administration to drop its investigation into Low and extradite a Chinese government target living in the United States. The man, dissident Miles Guo, was indicted in New York in a billion-dollar fraud case and remains in custody.
Low, who lived in China, was one of the main backers of the film The Wolf of Wall Street, starring DiCaprio. Lowe is a fugitive but maintains his innocence.
“Low's motivation for giving Mr. Michel the money to donate was not so that he could achieve any political goal. Instead, Lowe simply wanted to take a photo with himself and then-President Obama,” Michel's lawyers wrote.
In August 2024, a judge denied Michel's request for a new trial, in part because his lawyer used a generative artificial intelligence program during closing arguments in the trial. The judges said this and other miscarriages of justice did not constitute a serious miscarriage of justice.
