Sean Kingston, the singer best known for his 2007 hit 'Beautiful Girls', has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for a $1m wire fraud scheme. The 35-year-old, whose real name is Kisean Anderson, was convicted in a South Florida court in March alongside his mother, Janice Turner.
According to NBC South Florida, the pair accrued approximately $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 arrested in May 2024 after a SWAT raid on Kingston's South Florida mansion.
Investigators told the court that from April 2023 to March 2024, Kingston used social media to arrange purchases of luxury items, inviting sellers to his homes with the promise of featuring them on his accounts. When payment was due for items such as a bulletproof Cadillac Escalade or an Audemars Piguet watch, Kingston or his mother sent fake wire receipts to the sellers.
During her trial, Turner admitted to falsifying wires for her son, claiming she was protecting him from scammers by delaying payments. Kingston refused to testify. The prosecution presented texts from Kingston to his mother reading '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 sentencing, Kingston apologised and said he had learned from his actions, according to the Associated Press. His lawyer had requested home confinement due to the non-violent nature of the crime and the fact that most victims had been repaid. Kingston remains most famous for his 2007 single 'Beautiful Girls', which topped the Billboard charts, and has collaborated with artists including Nicki Minaj, Chris Brown and Justin Bieber.
Court records show Turner pleaded guilty to bank fraud in 2006 for stealing over $160,000 and served nearly 18 months. The pair have been sued multiple times for failure to pay for luxury items, most recently in February 2024 by a Florida entertainment systems company.
