Fugees rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel has been found guilty in federal court on charges including conspiracy, witness tampering, and failing to register as an agent of China, The Associated Press and NBC News reports.
Michel, a founding Fugee who later reinvented himself as a businessman and political figure, was found guilty of all charges, which included conspiracy to defraud the United States government and making foreign and conduit campaign contributions, one count of concealing material facts, and two counts of making a false entry in a record in connection with the conspiracy.
Michel was first charged in 2019, alongside the Malaysian fugitive Low Taek Jho (aka Jho Low), who is still at large and wanted internationally, both in relation to this case and for his role in the 1MDB scandal. Michel was accused of funneling money to Jho Low for political campaigns and also of making false statements in connection with the conspiracy.
Leonardo DiCaprio was called as a witness during the trial due to his connection with Jho Low, a Hollywood fixture who helped finance DiCaprio’s film The Wolf of Wall Street. “I understood him to be a huge businessman with many different connections in Abu Dhabi and Malaysia,” the actor testified, noting that he and Michel both attended group vacations with Jho Low.
Prosecutors alleged that Jho Low paid Michel roughly $100 million to influence American politics, first with illegal political payments intended to support Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012, and later to influence Donald J. Trump and his administration to end a Department of Justice investigation into Jho Low.
In the first instance, prosecutors alleged Michel was involved in a scheme to enlist attendees for an Obama fundraising dinner, then reimburse them for the tickets using foreign sources of money—and to threaten them if they came clean to authorities. The second alleged scheme took root as Low’s illegal lobbying came unravelled. It had been said to involve attempts to influence White House and justice officials to help return Chinese dissident Miles Guo, wanted for a separate fraud, to China. (Guo, who had also developed ties with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, was arrested in March.)
In court, Michel argued that he had been acting on the advice of his lawyers when he met a Chinese minister at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York in 2017. He denied “willfully and knowingly” acting as a “secret agent under the direction and control of China when he approached the FBI,” his defense lawyers David Kenner and Charles Haskell wrote in court filings.
On April 18, Michel testified in court. He described himself as a “celebrity surrogate” for Low, claiming he was paid $20 million in an effort to get him a photo with Obama in 2012. Michel told jurors that he “basically asked for $1 million to start thinking about how” he might make the photo happen. The amount eventually grew to $20 million; Jho Low got the photo at a White House Christmas party. Michel also said used his own money when he paid for friends to attend a 2012 Obama frundraiser.
Michel also testified that his alleged efforts to have Guo extradited were not as an agent of China, but he took meetings with the FBI agents voluntarily. “I took it upon myself to report because I thought the FBI should know,” he said. The case was sent for jury deliberation on Monday, April 24.