Hip Hop Group Fugues Member Pras Admits he was an FBI Informant & Faces 22 Years in Jail After Accepting $100M.
The aforementioned associate, whose real name is Low Taek Jho, is a Malaysian national who allegedly divested his country’s sovereign wealth fund of 4.5 billion dollars. Jho used the stolen funds to “buy his way into American social and celebrity circles,” throwing $100 million in funding towards Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Wolf Of Wall Street—as a play to become friends with the latter.
Pras (real name Prakazrel Michel) is currently on the hook for one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States government, failing to register as an agent of China and witness tampering charges, per the New York Post.
The 50-year-old is being accused of helping facilitate two primary alleged crimes, one of which saw him set up a Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign fundraiser where he would reimburse attendees $40,000 each using his foreign connections to financial resources.
Pras explained that he later discovered Jho’s primary goal of getting in with the U.S. government, hoping to exploit his relationship with then-President Barack Obama to do so.
The first of four charges against the “Ghetto Superstar” accuses him of contributing over $1.1 million of the Malaysian man’s money to Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, but framing it as money from multiple people.
According toNPR, Pras is accused of allegedly lobbying to help Malaysian billionaire Jho Low by pressuring American judicial officials and government figures when Low’s finance scheme went south.
Prosecutors also believe he was a middleman after being asked to help the Chinese government with the secure return of a “dissident” living in the U.S. who had ties to Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
