A choose dominated Pras Michel faces 15 to 19½ years in jail after siding with prosecutors on key sentencing enhancements.
Pras Michel’s sentencing prospects grew much more severe this week after a Washington, D.C., choose dominated the previous Fugees rapper faces between 15 and 19½ years in federal jail for his position in a sprawling international lobbying and marketing campaign finance conspiracy tied to Malaysian billionaire Jho Low.
In an 18-page order filed November 4, 2025, U.S. District Decide Colleen Kollar-Kotelly settled a long-running dispute between federal prosecutors and Michel’s protection workforce over how one can calculate his punishment below federal sentencing tips.
The ruling, which doesn’t impose a ultimate sentence, determines the severity of Michel’s punishment when sentencing takes place later this 12 months.
Decide Kollar-Kotelly sided with prosecutors on a number of key enhancements, agreeing that Michel obstructed justice, laundered illicit funds, and acted as an unregistered international agent.
These findings established a sentencing vary of roughly 15 to 19½ years, a major setback for the protection, which had argued Michel ought to face not more than 5 to 6 years.
Michel’s attorneys had claimed the Grammy-winning artist was “a political novice manipulated by international billionaires and self-serving intermediaries,” and that his conduct didn’t warrant such extreme penalties.
However the choose disagreed, writing that the protection’s argument “understates the severity of the offenses and the defendant’s position in advancing them.”
The choice follows Michel’s 2023 conviction on 10 felony counts, together with conspiracy, unlawful international lobbying, witness tampering, and marketing campaign finance violations.
Prosecutors mentioned he took tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from Low, a fugitive financier accused of looting Malaysia’s 1MDB fund and funneling it into U.S. political donations to curry favor with former President Barack Obama and President Trump and different authorities officers.
That is the newest authorized setback for Pras.
