Sean Kingston sentenced to three and half years in prison over $1m wire fraud scheme

Sean Kingston has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison after being convicted of a $1 million fraud scheme.

The Miami-born singer and rapper – real name Kisean Paul Anderson – was found guilty of wire fraud in a South Florida court in March alongside his mother, Janice Turner, for accruing roughly $1m worth of luxury items through falsified payments that never cleared, with Turner separately sentenced to five years in prison with three years of probation last month.

The two were initially arrested in May 2024 following a SWAT raid on his South Florida mansion, conducted in the wake of a lawsuit filed against him for allegedly not paying for luxury items.

Turner was taken into custody during the raid, while Kingston was arrested at Fort Irwin, an Army training base in California’s Mojave Desert, where he was performing.

Rapper Sean Kingston has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for his role in a $1 million fraud scheme pic.twitter.com/ag7gaSJJQL

— Dexerto (@Dexerto) August 15, 2025

According to court records, Kingston used social media from April 2023 to March 2024 to arrange purchases of high-end merchandise, per The Hollywood Reporter. After negotiating deals, Kingston would then invite sellers to one of his Florida homes and promise to feature them and their products on his accounts.

However, investigators said when the time came to pay for the items, which included a bulletproof Cadillac Escalade and an Audemars Piguet watch, either Kingston or Turner would text the sellers fake wire receipts.

When the funds didn’t clear, victims would repeatedly contact Kingston and Turner, but were either never paid or received money only after filing lawsuits and contacting law enforcement.

During her trial, Kingston’s mother admitted to falsifying wires for her son, claiming it was done in an effort to protect him from scammers by delaying payments for luxury items. Kingston himself refused to testify.

The prosecution presented texts from Kingston to his mother that read, “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 the judge delivered his sentence on Friday (August 15), Kingston apologised for his actions and said he had learned from the experience, according to the Associated Press. His lawyer had previously asked the judge for home confinement, due to the non-violent nature of the crime and the fact that Kingston had paid back most of the people he defrauded.

He will begin serving his time immediately.

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