Super Goss: Beanie Sigel Pleads Guilty To Tax Charges

Thursday 11 August 2011

Beanie Sigel Pleads Guilty To Tax Charges

Jay-Z's former protégé is facing up to three years in prison.
By Rob Markman

Beanie Sigel
Photo: MTV News

Things aren't looking too good for Beanie Sigel. The MC's lawyer Fortunato Perri Jr. confirmed to MTV News on Wednesday (August 10) that the former Jay-Z rap protégé is now facing up to three years in prison after he admitted in federal court on Tuesday that he didn't file or pay taxes between 2003 and 2005.

U.S. prosecutors estimate that the rapper owes approximately $350,000 on $1 million of unreported income; Beans subsequently pleaded guilty to three counts of failure to file his federal income tax returns. Beans will be sentenced on November 18, when he could get as much as three years' prison time.

His attorney, however, doesn't believe that the government's calculations are entirely accurate. "We intend to raise issues at the sentencing hearing which we believe will change those loss figures," Perri Jr. told MTV News. "We're going to ask the court to review our issues that we raised and our calculations, and it's our hope that those numbers will be successfully challenged at the time of the sentencing hearing."

If the court does recognize the defense's new calculations, it could impact the judge's decision during sentencing for Sigel. There's even a likelihood that he wouldn't have to do the statutory three-year maximum on the charges.

Sigel, who broke out with his 1999 album, The Truth, saw moderate success while signed to Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella Records, but his career eventually dipped after he was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in October 2004 on weapons charges. Sigel would go on to release a total of four solo albums and become the head of State Property, a rap group and record label that he launched himself and that also spawned a clothing line and two films.

The Broad Street Bully appeared on "RapFix Live" last month and told MTV's Sway that though he seemed to have amassed a lot of wealth during his Roc-A-Fella days, he didn't get everything he felt he was owed.

"From the outside looking in, it's like, 'Yo he's getting it,' " Sigel said before breaking down the financial splits between him and his business partners at Roc-A-Fella. "The clothing line, it was my idea — the State Property line, I only owned 20 percent of that. It was my idea, I brought that to the table. I brought the movie scripts which led up to all those movies, [with] us that played in it — people don't know we only got SAG wages. We ain't get no money from that."

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