Latest news with #RICO
Time of India
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Rapper Cash Out sentenced to life in prison for running trafficking ring under RICO charges
Atlanta rapper Cash Out, whose real name is John Gibson, has been sentenced to life in prison for rape, with an additional 70 years for a string of crimes including sex trafficking and racketeering. The court ruling, delivered on 18 July, brings to a close a harrowing trial that exposed a seven-year criminal enterprise hiding in plain sight. Rapper Cash Out sentenced to life for orchestrating vicious trafficking ring Cash Out rose to fame in the early 2010s with hits like "Cashin' Out" and "She Twerkin". But behind the celebrity image was a grim reality. Prosecutors say Gibson exploited his fame to lure vulnerable women into sex work. His victims were manipulated, starved, and abused, all under the guise of industry opportunities. Cash Out's mother 'Mama Cash Out' was also covicted The rapper's mother, Linda Smith, infamously known as "Mama Ca$h Out," was also convicted and sentenced to 30 years. His cousin Tyrone Taylor received life in prison plus 70 years. Prosecutors described the trio as the core operators of a trafficking network targeting women across Atlanta. Evidence included messages from eight seized phones and disturbing testimonies from survivors. Fulton County prosecutor Earnell Winfrey called the operation more than just pimping, it was modern-day slavery. One woman testified she was only fed if she performed sex acts. Prosecutors painted a picture of systematic abuse, with earnings collected in kitchen drawers and victims subjected to physical control and threats. Who is Rapper Cash Out? Signed to Epic Records in 2011, Cash Out seemed destined for stardom. Instead, his conviction now stands as a dark symbol of celebrity abuse. With 11 convictions including rape, aggravated sodomy, and RICO violations, Gibson's legacy has been shattered. He must also register as a sex offender and avoid areas connected to his crimes.
Metro
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Rapper Cash Out sentenced to life in prison for rape and racketeering
Platinum-selling rapper Cash Out has been handed a life prison sentence after being found guilty of rape and racketeering. The musician, 34, rose to fame in 2011 with his single Cashin' Out, released under Epic Records and which peaked at number 36 on the US charts. He is also known for his debut album, Let's Get It. Real name John-Michael Hakeem Gibson, he appeared in court in Atlanta for his verdict last week. Convicted of rape, he was then sentenced to life behind bars, as well as an additional 70 years under RICO (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act). These charges include racketeering, sex trafficking, firearm possession, and other related offences. As per WSB-TV Atlanta, some of the sentences will be concurrent (at the same time) and others consecutive. Gibson's mother, Linda Smith, also received 30 years, 20 for racketeering and 10, served concurrently, for sex trafficking. His cousin, Tyrone Taylor, was sentenced to life for aggravated sodomy and rape, plus 60 years for sex trafficking, assault, false imprisonment, and drug possession. All three will be placed on the sex offenders register and prohibited from contacting any victims in the future or returning to areas related to their crimes. This includes Fulton Industrial Boulevard. Charges were first brought against Gibson in June 2023. At the time, his lawyers argued that the victims were bullied into testifying by authorities. But, during the trial, it has been argued that Gibson attempted to silence witnesses with the help of his mother. The jury was shown interrogation footage of Smith from 2021, filmed after she had been taken into custody at a physical therapy clinic. She denied any wrongdoing in the video, saying she had visited the facility to look for her friend who had skipped a probation appointment. But in a series of phone calls played to the court, Gibson could be heard instructing his mother to find the missing woman. 'I mean, y'all acting like I done kidnapped her,' Smith is believed to have said during questioning. However, prosecutors have maintained that Gibson engaged in a 'seven-year reign of terror'. The She Twerkin' hitmaker's trial then began two months ago after he, Smith, and Taylor were accused of coercing and forcing women into sex. Prosecutors said that these women were exploited for profit and that Gibson used his star status to pursue the crimes. This included the trio using their record company, Pyrez Music Group, to entice and recruit young women. They were accused of telling the women they would receive financial rewards and increased positions of power in the company in return. While testifying, one witness reported that she was only given food if she performed sex acts for money. Fulton County prosecutor Earnell Winfrey told the court: 'This ain't just straight pimping—this is trafficking.' More Trending Ahead of his sentencing, Gibson said he thought the jurors 'made the wrong judgment' by finding him guilty, maintaining his innocence. He also claimed that all the women were of legal age and consented to their treatment. Meanwhile, key evidence presented in the case included text messages from eight different mobile phones, showing a trail of their activities. Said messages are believed to have documented their illegal operations and the coordination between the three defendants. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Cheaper by the Dozen child star Jimmy Hunt dies aged 85 MORE: Linkin Park refuse to play poignant song live after Chester Bennington's death MORE: TV soap legend Eileen Fulton died aged 91
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Rapper Cash Out Sentenced to Life in Prison Plus 70 Years on RICO and Sex Trafficking Charges
Rapper Cash Out has been sentenced to life in prison plus 70 years after being found guilty in his RICO and sexual assault case. Cash Out, born John Gibson, was found guilty on Friday in his Atlanta trial. He was sentenced to life in prison for his rape charge as well as an additional 70 years for RICO and his other convictions, according to WSB-TV Atlanta. The sentences will be concurrent. More from Variety 'Cash Out' Review: John Travolta Goes Through the Motions in Uninspired Crypto Caper The Atlanta emcee experienced moderate success in the early 2010s, with his 2012 debut single, 'Cashin' Out,' reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Rap Airplay chart. He scored another hit with 'She Twerkin' two years later, when he also released his sole album, 'Let's Get It.' Alongside his sentencing, his mother Linda Smith was also sentenced to 30 years on RICO charges, while his cousin Tyrone Taylor was given life in prison plus 70 years. The trial, which began two months ago, concerned allegations that Cash Out, his mother and cousin coerced and forced women into sex work over the course of several years. They were accused of exploiting women for profit, with prosecutors using evidence that included text messages from eight cellphones. Charges were initially brought in June 2023 against Cash Out, who allegedly leveraged his celebrity status to commit his crimes. His legal team argued that the victims were bullied into testifying against him, while the prosecution claimed that he had engaged in a 'seven-year reign of terror.' 'This has been going on for seven years,' said Fulton County prosecutor Earnell Winfrey during the trial. 'This ain't just straight pimping—this is trafficking.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts? Final Emmy Predictions: Talk Series and Scripted Variety - New Blood Looks to Tackle Late Night Staples
Buzz Feed
2 days ago
- Buzz Feed
29 Massive Family Secrets People Uncovered
Recently, we wrote about family secrets people discovered, and members of the BuzzFeed Community had some of their own secrets to share. Here's what they had to get off their chests.* "That the 'holiday' I had at my aunt's house for a month, where my mum would call me a lot of days crying, was actually me being kidnapped and taken to a secluded town in the middle of nowhere (in rural Australia where it was four hours to the closest town). My mum didn't want to call the police at first because she was close to her sister and believed she was being manipulated by another family member (who had successfully kidnapped my brother many years ago). But she eventually called the police, and I was brought back. I had a feeling something was off with the way my mum would talk on the phone ... but she didn't want to scare me at the time. I didn't find out for sure until a few years later." "I was told my father was arrested and sent to prison for 15 years for being a part of a boiler room fraud scheme in the late '80s and that he was charged under RICO for communications fraud and theft on A LOT of counts. I went to visit him a few times, and he would send cards on holidays and my birthday. ... I remember him using a cane the first time I saw him in prison, and he said he 'got hurt.' My 4-year-old self thought this made sense. After a year or so, he stopped writing, and I stopped visiting." "My aunt Rosa was the only sister not living in the US. She had a child my mom's age but no husband and was never referred to as widowed. I always suspected something dark kept her in Mexico because the subject would get changed when someone brought it up. Back in 2009, I was visiting her and asked her why she'd never moved here. Turns out she did in the '50s, but her husband was an abusive drunk. He hit her son (my cousin) when he was three and broke his nose. That was the final straw. My aunt waited for him to go to sleep, packed her bags, loaded her car, cut his throat, and ran back to Mexico." "For me, it was the lawsuit against my grandpa for groping my cousin. She was 15. I was 8. My parents left me alone with him after this, even though my cousin swears it happened. I didn't know the truth till I found my estranged cousin when I was 18, and my parents had the audacity to tell me that she was toxic." "I only discovered a few years ago that the commune my parents were in in the 1970s was more like a sex cult than a commune. There was one leader, and everyone gave all their money to him; he set all the rules and made very arbitrary decisions. Like making my parents marry even though, as my mom said (which sort of traumatized 14-year-old me), 'we weren't even sleeping together that week!' Some seriously weird shit went down. It wasn't a commune; it was a cult. I asked my mom bluntly about it a few years ago, and she agreed." "My great-grandmother and her family were sex workers. Her mother and aunt ran a 'boarding house' for 'professional women' and the men they would 'entertain.' They also were part of a team smuggling liquor across the border into the US during prohibition. I had guessed at some point that the 'boarding house' was actually a brothel, which was confirmed to me once I was older." "My mum passed away never knowing that it was my sibling who'd turned her in to local authorities after a decade on the run. She ended up only serving nine months of a 22-year sentence because she'd been living a quiet life during that time. This meant we could leave an abusive household to move in with her once she was out. Living with her was only mildly better in the end, but my sibling's actions might have saved our lives. I found out after I was married and moved out of state. I'd thought it was suspicious [that she was arrested] so soon after we'd discovered where she was living, but outright denial meant I gave up wondering as a teen." "I grew up with a single mother and no contact with relatives. I was told nothing about why it was only my brother, myself, and whatever random man my mother was involved with at the time. We moved constantly, and she seemed to have no friends either. If I asked any questions about why we didn't have relatives or why we were moving again, I would get frozen out, and she would not speak to me or look at me for months at a time, so I learned to stop asking. When I moved out at 16, I started trying to look for anything in libraries that might help me find out what the real story was about any family I might have." "My siblings and I could never figure out when we'd get together with my mom's family why my one aunt was always resentful about my other aunt who had a child out of wedlock. After about fifty years, we finally found out with the passing of my mom. My resentful aunt had a child and was forced to give it up. The reason she had to give up the baby was because she became pregnant by my father — he, my mom, grandparents, and aunt kept it all secret. My brother and I were in between the other baby. Sadly, we connected with the brother and were in the process of meeting when he died of a heart attack. It is so weird that my mom forgave everyone and acted like nothing was ever wrong. I feel so sorry for my mom, who has lived with this for so long. Even on her deathbed, she kept the secret." "My sister has a different dad. That one just took thinking twice about some math that they'd been normalizing to us since we were tiny. We just didn't think about it! Yeah, she's the only brunette in a family of blondes, but that's my sister! If anyone asks, my mom fell pregnant at 16, a few months before meeting my 23-year-old father. We're unsure if our dad knew, but he's not the kind of magnanimous benefactor who would keep a kid that's not his. I respect my mother's decision because that kept my sister glued to our side during custody battles, the loss of our mom, secured a childhood for my sister under heinous circumstances." "I didn't know my dad for close to 40 years. Folks would tell me very little about him, and if I asked for any more details, I was always told to 'let sleeping dogs lie.' At one point, I even asked if he knew where we lived, and they said if he did know, 'we'd move again.' After my grandmother died, I got more information and was able to find my dad, except he had died 15 years before. His family was certainly shocked to learn about me. My dad's family told me his parents would have loved me, especially my Abuelo, with whom I share a birthday ... I've never forgiven my mom for this." "I had a great uncle on my mom's side who I just loved. He and his wife (they had no children) lived in the US (my family is Canadian), but they'd come to visit often. He'd spend most of their visits playing with me, telling me stories of where he'd traveled and bedtime stories from different countries from memory. My great-uncle died suddenly when I was eight. I was always told it was a heart attack. His wife, who was European, moved back to Europe but kept in touch with my grandparents. Fast forward a couple of decades, and my mom inherited my great-uncle's personal papers from her father (my great-uncle's brother). It turns out my great-uncle joined US Intelligence in the 1940s and was working for the CIA on an 'assignment' when he died. No idea if his wife knew." "I found out that my great-grandmother was a mail-order bride. Growing up, when my dad would tell me stories about her, he just said that she was 'essentially a mail-order bride.' I took that to mean that maybe she found a guy through a pen pal or something. Nope! I found out later she went through a company that connected mail-order brides to single men. Unfortunately, both her husbands were assholes. It sounded really ugly." "My mother wasn't my grandfather's child. She didn't find out until I shared my 23andMe results with her. If she weren't an affair baby, I'd have been about 1/4 Italian. Instead, I'm 1/4 Latvian and absolutely 0% Italian. Grandma just so happened to be 'very good friends' with a Latvian man who had been one of her patients. What really sucked was when my mom told one of my aunts, she found out that not only did everyone else know, but they'd agreed not to tell my mother for going on 60 years now." "I was in a cult. I didn't know the word for it [at the time], but I would constantly sit in church and just wonder if it was all made up by someone who enjoyed controlling other people. After some research (that I was told never to do!), my suspicions were confirmed." My grandmother started getting dementia about 10 years ago, [and we found out that] neither of my mother's siblings are my grandfather's children. She had a 15-year affair, and my 'oops baby' mother is his only legitimate child. Granny also offed that same grandfather. There's no way to prove it, though, and at this point, it was over 20 years ago. He fell out of bed and broke his hip, and instead of calling for help, she unplugged all the phones and left him on the floor for three days. She 'found' him when the neighbor came by to take him fishing or something, but by that point, he was delirious and half unconscious. He died a couple of days later from a massive stroke." "My now-dead father-in-law had multiple affairs during his marriage to my mother-in-law. It was a known family secret that all the men had second and even third families. My husband said his dad never had a second family, but there are photos of 'extended cousins' who look eerily like my husband and his brothers." "My grandmother (dad's mother) lied to my dad and his sister for decades about who their real fathers were. They believed their father had died when my dad was in his twenties and my aunt was in her teens — until 23andMe tests came back and showed they were only HALF siblings. My dad was rightfully angry and confronted my grandmother about it. It turns out the man she was married to was sterile, and her doctor (back in the '50s and '60s) told her if she wanted kids, she'd need to 'seek other options.' So she did — with her then-boss and another random man. She refuses to apologize to my dad and aunt for lying to them, even after her husband's death ages ago." "My cousin who was super ill actually had a sickness that was preventable with medicine. ... [He] died because the woman my uncle married was a religious nut. ... [This was] confirmed later when I was an adult. I remember getting told off as a kid because I asked, 'Isn't there medicine for what he has?'" "My dad told me this full story on a camping trip recently. ... Basically, when my grandma and grandpa were still married and had my dad's older sister, my grandpa was very, very religious, but my grandma wasn't as invested. I'm not sure whether it was a splinter group of their church or an entirely different thing, but my grandpa eventually joined this hyper-religious, cult-like group (my dad just referred to it as a flat-out cult), which was led by a woman about the same age as my grandma and grandpa. My grandma knew this group was sketchy af, but this was the early '70s, so she felt like she had to go along with my grandpa's devotion to the group. The group was meeting one night at my grandma and grandpa's house, and somehow, possibly over the course of just that night, or maybe it had been ongoing, the leader convinced my grandpa to kill, or at least attack, my grandma, who at that time was pregnant with my dad." "When I was a kid, my parents were eager to send me upstairs to bed because they were hiding lots of things they didn't want me and others to know about. Mom drank too much. Dad was in the closet and in a long-term relationship with the man who lived in our house with us — and Dad's partner actually owned the house!" "My uncle was the local drug dealer. ... When I hit 14, he mentioned to me at a family event that if I ever wanted to experiment, I just had to talk to him. He would give me reasonable access. If he found out that I was using other stuff, he'd tell my parents. Never paid for drugs all through high school, and when he came to pick me up in Year 9 one time, I got so many shocked looks." "That my aunt did not die of an asthma attack in her sleep but took her own life. She had been very depressed. As an adult, they admitted she purposely overdosed. As a child with asthma, I wish they had just told me the truth because before I started to suspect it was a lie, I was terrified that I was going to die too." "I grew up in a small, rural community where everyone knew each other, especially if they had kids the same age. My parents were close friends with all of my friends' parents and would spend nights over at their houses and stuff. It turns out they were all doing drugs and swinging." "One of my aunts had a bad relationship with my grandpa. Grandpa was an asshole, so it wasn't hard to believe, but she never came around family events, and it was just odd. ... It turns out that my aunt was in charge of watching her infant sister when she was 10-11 years old; the infant sister died on 'her watch,' and grandpa blamed her for it. I first heard this story when I was 18, about a year after Grandpa died. I knew something fucked up had happened, but I didn't think it was that bad." "My dad died of a heart attack. His heart was bad, but he was also a functional cocaine user. ... He made good money, provided for his family, and had nice cars — it was somewhat unexpected. My sister saw on his death certificate and showed me at about 28 years old that cocaine was in his system when he died, and they found the baggie in the bathroom. His artery was already blocked 95%, and he'd had chest pains those few days and set an appointment for Monday with doctors. The story was he was peeing in the bathroom and took a puff of his cigarette, and then that blocked his heart to 100%, so I guess I somehow figured plaque dislodged from one place in the artery to that final 95% place with the puff of that cigarette." "That my dad is not my bio dad, and my mom was an unwed teen mom for the first year of my life. Before I get into it, my mom did what she had to do to get out of a tough situation, and I love my dad. He has never treated me differently than my siblings and told me after all this came out that I am his daughter regardless." "My grandmother knew her second husband was sexually assaulting my mother as a child and did nothing until it came out to the rest of the world, too. Mom confirmed she told my grandma after the first or second time it happened, at seven years old. And this part hasn't been confirmed, but I believe there's enough evidence with how my grandmother talks about him that she never stopped loving him and only divorced him because it's what was expected of her. I don't talk to her anymore." And finally..."[I found out] that two of my dad's cousins had a kid [together]. No shit."
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Delta flight headed to Atlanta returns to LAX over smoking engine
Trouble with the engine brought a Delta flight headed to Atlanta back to the airport in Los Angeles Friday. Delta flight 446 was diverted back to the airport shortly after departure, Delta Air Lines reports. A photo and video shows smoke coming from the left engine of the plane. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] An emergency was declared with Air Traffic Control for priority handling for the aircraft. 'As nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and crew, the flight crew followed procedures and safely returned to the gate,' Delta said in a statement. 'We apologize to our customers for the delay in their travel plans.' The aircraft is a Boeing 767-400 with two pilots, seven flight attendants and 226 passengers. The flight landed safely and taxied to the gate under its own power, Delta said. All aboard got off the plane normally. Delta said the local fire department examined the aircraft as a safety precaution, and the airline's maintenance teams will examine the aircraft. Passengers will be sent to their final destinations on a new aircraft. TRENDING STORIES: Ca$h Out trial: Atlanta rapper found guilty of RICO, sex trafficking charges Tree falls on cars in Gwinnett County amid afternoon thunderstorms 12 arrested in Cherokee County 'Operation Phantom Whisper' child predator sting [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] Solve the daily Crossword
