{"id":63636,"date":"2026-04-30T22:58:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T22:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/fugees-rapper-pras-turns-himself-in-to-begin-14-year-sentence\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T22:58:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T22:58:32","slug":"fugees-rapper-pras-turns-himself-in-to-begin-14-year-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/fugees-rapper-pras-turns-himself-in-to-begin-14-year-sentence\/","title":{"rendered":"Fugees Rapper Pras Turns Himself In to Begin 14-Year Sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/pras\/\" id=\"auto-tag_pras\" data-tag=\"pras\">Pras<\/a> Michel, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/fugees\/\" id=\"auto-tag_fugees\" data-tag=\"fugees\">Fugees<\/a> member who was convicted in 2023 of charges including money laundering, illegal lobbying, and campaign finance violations, turned himself in to the Federal Correctional Institution in Safford, Arizona, where he will begin a 14-year prison sentence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t\u201cToday is a painful day for Pras, for his family, and for everyone who believes in a fair system of justice,\u201d Michel\u2019s spokesperson, Erica Dumas, said in a statement. \u201cPras honors the legal process as he reports to begin his sentence. The FARA-related charges that led to his conviction are being vigorously contested on appeal, and his legal team believes the record will show that his rights were violated and the truth was obscured. This chapter is difficult but it is not his final one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tA judge initially told Michel to begin his sentence in January but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/fugees-pras-michel-denied-bail-appeal-conviction-prison-1235503566\/\">delayed it to March<\/a>. The judge subsequently gave him another 30 days, making April 30 the day he needed to surrender himself. \u201cHe has to fight it on the inside,\u201d Dumas tells <em>Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cHis appeal is in the very beginning stages. As you can imagine, it\u2019s a very complicated case with lots of files.\u201d<\/p>\n<section class=\"brands-most-popular \/\/ recirculation-modules trending-in-article lrv-u-margin-tb-2 lrv-u-border-a-2 u-box-shadow-5-5 lrv-u-padding-lr-1 a-span1 u-padding-b-1@tablet u-overflow-hidden\">\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\" class=\"c-heading larva  lrv-u-text-align-center u-border-color-black a-font-theme-primary-xxs lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase u-letter-spacing-0063 lrv-u-padding-t-050 u-padding-b-0375@tablet lrv-u-padding-b-050@mobile-max lrv-u-border-b-2\">\n<p>\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tDumas says that Michel has spent the time before his sentence with his family. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t really go out,\u201d she says. \u201cHe\u2019s vegan, he doesn\u2019t drink, and he doesn\u2019t smoke.\u201d His big outing recently, though, was Kanye West\u2019s April 3 concert in Los Angeles, where Dumas says he hung out in a suite with Dave Chappelle and Eryka Badu and sang along with Lauryn Hill when she was onstage as West\u2019s guest. In 2023, Michel appeared with his fellow Fugees at reunion dates, eventually <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-features\/fugees-drama-lauryn-hill-wyclef-pras-controversies-1235128288\/\">distancing himself from Hill and Wyclef Jean<\/a>, but Dumas noted thast Michel sang along to one of Hill\u2019s songs. Michel <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/pras-drops-lawsuit-against-lauryn-hill-1235529330\/\">dropped a suit<\/a> against Hill in March.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tFederal prosecutors indicted Michel in 2019, accusing him of making illegal contributions to President Obama\u2019s 2012 reelection campaign. They later expanded the charges to include bank fraud, concealment of material facts, witness tampering, violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and acting as an unregistered agent of the People\u2019s Republic of China. <em>Rolling Stone <\/em>reported that the charges stemmed from Michel\u2019s association with Low Taek Jho, a Malaysian financier who\u2019d been accused of stealing $4.5 billion from a state fund. The DOJ claimed Michel used some of that money to lobby the Trump administration to stop investigating the financier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/pras-michel-fugees-turning-himself-in-1235556394\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pras Michel, the Fugees member who was convicted in 2023 of charges including money laundering, illegal lobbying, and campaign finance violations, turned himself in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":63637,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop","article","has-excerpt","has-avatar","has-author","has-date","has-comment-count","has-category-meta","has-read-more","thumbnail-"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}