Sean Kingston, Mother Reportedly Stole Over $1 Million Via Fraud
Sean Kingston has been a hot topic for the first time in a long time after a SWAT team raided his home in Fort Lauderdale last week. The 34-year-old artist and his mother reportedly accrued over a million dollars due to fraud, leading to their arrest.
ABC 30 Action News reported that Kingston and his mother, Janice Turner, stole $500,000 in jewelry, over $200,000 from Bank Of America, $160,000 from an Escalade dealer, over $100,000 from First Republic Bank, $86,000 from a custom bed maker, and more. This all took place from October 2023 to this past March.
Thus, they have been charged with conducting an organized scheme to defraud, grand theft, identity theft, and other related crimes, per arrest warrants shared by Broward County’s Sheriff Office. Turner was arrested on Thursday (May 23) after the SWAT team raided Kingston’s rented mansion in suburban Fort Lauderdale. However, the “Beautiful Girls” singer was arrested in Fort Irwin, an army training base in the Mojave Desert. He was there due to a performance.
ABC 30 Action News reported that Sean Kingston is being held at the High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto, Calif., before returning to Florida. Robert Rosenblatt, Kingston and Janice Turner’s attorney, appeared before a judge this past Friday (May 24). He claimed that the Jamaican singer would return to Florida of his own volition if permitted, with the idea that it would “save the state the expense of extradition and the costs of travel for the detectives and Sean.”
Turner, who was being held at Broward County Jail, had a bail amount set at $160,000. “We look forward to addressing these (charges) in court and are confident of a successful resolution for Shawn and his mother,” Rosenblatt said.
This isn’t Kingston or Turner’s first run-ins with the law. The Road To Deliverance artist’s recent arrest came amid serving two years of probation for trafficking stolen property. In 2006, his mother pled guilty to bank fraud after stealing $160,000 and served just under two years in prison. The two were sued in 2015 by a seller of customized watches after failing to pay him $356,000 that they owed. In 2018, they were sued again by a New York jewelry store for scamming them out of nine items and had to pay $301,000.
This past February, Sean Kingston was sued by a Florida entertainment systems company for failing to pay $120,000 of a $150,000 bill he owed for a 232-inch television they installed in his home. The artist committed to shooting commercials for the company alongside Justin Bieber if they gave him a “low down payment and credit,” but neither the commercials nor payment took place. The company claimed that Bieber had no involvement, and Kingston simply used his name to secure a deal.
“He has basically a sales pitch that he goes through to defraud people,” Dennis Card, attorney for Ver Ver Entertainment said last week. “He induces them into giving him really expensive things. We know that our property is inside this house right here.”
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7t7XBnmWcp51ku6bD0micp6yVp8Gitc2mnKesX6iyorqMpKCnn6OpvK95zKiroZ2iYsC1u8ueZGplnZ65rbXOp2SfqpGqsW59kWxrcXBhaYZ0ew%3D%3D