Sean Kingston and His Mother Plead Not Guilty for $1 Million Fraud, Demand Jury Trial
The "Beautiful Girls" singer and his mother are alleged to have involvement in a scheme to defraud sellers of luxury items.
Sean Kingston and his mother, Janice Turner, are fighting back against a two-decade prison bid involving a $1 million wire fraud scheme.
According to The Sun Sentinel, the two pleaded not guilty during an arraignment hearing in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Monday (Aug. 26). In their pleas to Broward Circuit Judge Ernest Kollra, Kingston, born Kisean Anderson, 34, and Turner, 61, also demanded a jury trial and discovery. Despite their requests, Kingston and Turner's $900,000 bond went unchanged.
"Once the true facts come out we are confident of vindication," stated Robert Rosenblatt, an attorney on Kingston's legal team.
The mother-son duo were arrested in May, in which a home raid was also conducted, and indicted in a Miami federal court last month, where they were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and five counts of wire fraud. According to a document filed by the U.S. District Court's Southern District of Florida, Kingston, and Turner participated in a "scheme to defraud victim sellers of high-end specialty vehicles, jewelry, and other goods purchased by the defendants through the use of fraudulent documents."
It's also alleged that the two "unjustly enriched themselves by falsely representing that they had executed bank wire or other monetary payment transfers" as payment for the goods "when in fact no such bank wire or other monetary payment transfers had been executed by the purported banks."
Kingston publicly denied the allegations upon his May arrest, dismissing the news as "negative energy" in his Instagram Stories. "I am good and so is my mother! My lawyers are handling everything as we speak."
Each defendant faces up to 20 years in prison.
