Suge Knight Bail Set @ $25Mil | Made $10Mil+ Charging New Rappers/Artists "Tax" To Come To LA/LV

JordanWearinThe45

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LOS ANGELES (AP) - Prosecutors on Thursday requested that a judge set bail for Marion "Suge" Knight at $25 million in his murder case and say the former rap music mogul has extorted millions from rappers in recent years.


The motion filed by Deputy District Attorney Cynthia Barnes cites 31 incidents in which Knight is accused of threatening others or using violence since 2004, including threats he made about the upcoming film "Straight Outta Compton."

The motion also says Knight has been involved in money-laundering and extortion schemes targeting up-and-coming as well as established rappers in recent years.

Knight and an associate have been involved in an extortion scheme that has netted more than $10 million, an affidavit filed by a sheriff's detective says. "Apparently when a new artist or rapper comes to either Los Angeles or Las Vegas, he is required to pay a 'tax' to defendant Knight," Barnes' motion states.


The Death Row Records co-founder is scheduled to appear in a Los Angeles courtroom on Friday morning for a hearing regarding his bail.

He is being held without bail on murder, attempted murder and hit-and-run charges filed after he struck striking two men, killing one of them, with his truck during a fight in a Compton, California, parking lot in late January.

Knight, 49, has pleaded not guilty.

A phone message for Knight's attorney, Matthew Fletcher, was not immediately returned.

If Knight attempts to post bail, Barnes has requested that he prove the money has not come from illegal activities.

If Los Angeles Superior Court Ronald Coen grants Knight bail, he would either have to post the entire amount in cash or pay a bond company eight percent of the bail amount and they would put up the whole amount, Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Lou Shapiro said.

The bond company would keep Knight's money - $2 million if Knight's bail is set at $25 million - as its fee, Shapiro said.

Among the allegations of threats included in the motion is a summary of a heavily-redacted police report taken last year from someone who claims Knight threatened them over "Straight Outta Compton," a film about the rise of the gangster rap group NWA.

"Knight was angry that he was not compensated for his likeness in the movie," Barnes' motion states. It adds that Knight warned the unidentified victim that he was prepared to attack over the film and would target former NWA members Dr. Dre and Ice Cube.

Knight's 1994 conviction on a federal firearms charge and a 1995 conviction on two counts of assault with a firearm that led to a lengthy prison sentence are also cited in the motion to support.

"Since his release from prison custody, defendant Knight has continued his repugnant life of crime," the motion states before listing alleged crimes that include battery, criminal threats, extortion and assault.

According to an affidavit from a sheriff's investigator, Knight is part of an extortion scheme of rappers and professional athletes that is jointly run by the Crips and Bloods street gangs. Knight is a member of the Bloods gang, according to the affidavit signed by Sheriff's Sgt. Richard Biddle.

The manager of an unidentified "well-known" rapper told detectives that Knight and a Crips gang leader wanted $30,000 from the performer every time he came to Los Angeles, Biddle wrote.

Biddle stated detectives began looking into the extortion scheme after Knight was shot six times last year at a West Hollywood, California, nightclub on the weekend of the MTV Video Music Awards.

Knight has complained that he is suffering from complications from his wounds, and he told a judge at a hearing earlier this month that he is blind in one eye and has limited vision in his other eye.


He has been taken by ambulance from a courthouse three times since he was charged with murder. Knight is charged with killing Terry Carter, 55, while fleeing a fight with another man in the parking lot of a Compton, California, burger stand[

http://www.aol.com/article/2015/03/19/prosecutors-want-suge-knights-bail-set-at-25-million/21155564/?icid=maing-grid7|maing10|dl7|sec1_lnk2&pLid=630617/QUOTE]

I aint know cats was still paying Suge :dwillhuh:
 
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Young/Nacho\Drawz

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Sam Nazarian made his name and his billion-dollar fortune creating L.A. clubs and restaurants that attracted the hippest young celebrities.

He parlayed that fame into hotels in Beverly Hills and Miami's South Beach. This year, he looked to Las Vegas as the next step in a bold global expansion, opening the 1,600-room SLS Las Vegas hotel and casino in August.

Then he ran into the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

The board's routine vetting of Nazarian, who applied for a gaming license, has now thrown his Vegas plans into disarray. Investigators unearthed recent cocaine use — along with about $3 million in payments to a felon with convictions for drug possession and money laundering. Some of the money was paid to a convicted racketeer and Death Row Records founder Suge Knight.

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"One of the main reasons I moved here … was to get out of a certain lifestyle I was around," he told the gaming board, as members grilled him about his cocaine use.

He plans to keep his 10% stake in the Vegas hotel and to continue pursuing a gaming license. The matter comes before the Nevada Gaming Commission, which oversees the board, on Thursday.

State law requires anyone with more than a 5% stake in a casino to hold a license. Nazarian declined to be interviewed by The Times.

The night-life entrepreneur has struggled for eight years to turn the former Sahara Hotel into a desert hot spot, an anchor for the redevelopment of the Strip's northern end.

Nazarian's troubles provide vivid insights into gaming board investigations of prospective casino owners in Las Vegas, a city that has struggled to clean up its image ever since its founding by mobsters. Nevada regulators dig into applicants' backgrounds as if they were nominees for high public office.



Flanked by attorneys, Nazarian told the board that his recent drug use was "a bad indiscretion" and "a mistake" but insisted the episode was isolated to a single instance when he was attending a golf tournament in Mexico.

The initial denial irritated board members.

"We have the one issue of whether there was drug use, but then we had an additional issue of the degree to which you are speaking candidly and truthfully about it," board member Terry Johnson said.

The investigation also turned up long-standing ties to twice-convicted felon Derrick "Smokey" Armstrong, the man he accuses of blackmail.

Armstrong, a 43-year-old former West Los Angeles exotic car customizer, denied any wrongdoing in an interview with The Times. He called himself Nazarian's business partner and "fixer."

Nazarian acknowledged that he had made payments to Armstrong, who was convicted of drug possession in 1992 and pleaded guilty to money laundering in 2010. Nazarian, now 39, said he met Armstrong in 1999 and began paying him to customize his exotic cars.


Related story: L.A. nightclub operator Sam Nazarian bets on Las Vegas hotel-casino

The relationship soured after Armstrong borrowed money to open a car shop, Nazarian said at the hearing, and then threatened to harm or embarrass Nazarian unless he paid Armstrong another $1 million.

Nazarian, who is 6 feet 4, said he was "scared and embarrassed" and reported the threats to the Los Angeles Police Department starting in 2005.

But he kept making payments through 2013, Nazarian told the board.

One member of Nazarian's legal team dismissed Armstrong as a "parasite" common in the entertainment world.

"My city … is a city of barnacles for people who are achievers and high profile," attorney Joseph Taylor told the board. "The hangers-on, the clingers, the parasites — they are everywhere."

Nazarian told the board that Armstrong threatened repeatedly to embarrass him, disrupt pending business deals or physically harm him or members of his family.

One threat occurred the day of the grand opening of the SLS South Beach hotel, Nazarian said at the hearing: "[Armstrong] understood the mere fact that I had known him or associated with him was enough to garner bad press."

Armstrong, in an interview with The Times, said he received as much as $800,000 for work he did on behalf of Nazarian, including negotiating a deal to partner Nazarian with an energy drink producer. He denied threatening Nazarian.

"These allegations of extortion and being fearful are a bunch of lies," Armstrong said.

Dana Cole, a Los Angeles attorney who has represented Armstrong, said he helped Armstrong negotiate a settlement of a business dispute with Nazarian regarding a car business. It was not an extortion attempt, he said.

The payments included $90,000 to Knight and $83,000 to Hai Waknine, the convicted racketeer — both of whom, Nazarian told the board, were working with Armstrong.

Waknine served five years in federal prison after pleading guilty to one count of racketeering in connection with a money-laundering scheme linked to Israeli organized crime. Waknine could not be reached for comment.

"So roughly $3 million in monies … were paid either to Mr. Armstrong or to others, I guess it would be fair to say, in connection with Mr. Armstrong?" board member Johnson asked Nazarian during the hearing.

"It would be fair to say," Nazarian answered.

Knight declined to comment. But a business associate, entertainment producer Mark Blankenship, called the charges of extortion "a form of profiling and racism."

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The gaming board has serious concerns about prospective casino owners using drugs or consorting with felons, said Brown, a commission member since 2008 and a director of the law firm Fennemore Craig Jones Vargas. "It's big," he said. "It's major."

Veteran Las Vegas attorney Dominic Gentile said the gaming control board is rigorous in its investigations and insisted Nazarian is "not being singled out. This goes on no matter who it is."

In 1963, Frank Sinatra, then owner of Lake Tahoe's Cal Neva Casino, lost his license over his acquaintance with mobster Sam Giancana. Sinatra was approved for a new license 17 years later, only after friends Gregory Peck and Kirk Douglas spoke on his behalf.

Gentile added that many upstanding Nevada citizens — including himself — might have difficulty passing gaming commission muster.

"If you've lived any kind of life, and you've enjoyed it, there's a damn good chance you're not eligible," he said. "Let's just say that if you have a lot of money, but you've chosen to associate with people that have reputations and perhaps are notorious, it's going to be tough."
http://www.thecoli.com/threads/suge...n-scheme-of-owner-of-sls-hotel-casino.277191/
 

Bunchy Carter

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Catz in LA has always been extortion money from these ball players and rappers. If you want to walk freely around LA you better pay up. Chris brown and tyga are examples; you can tell those nikkas are paying up. Both of them nikkas look soft as baby shyt and you can look at both of those clows are paying for protection and that street respect.
 

itsyoung!!

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who is he extorting? rappers dont make money these days except for the top dogs who wont be scared of suge
rappers make more money now than ever before. Actually the opposite, the top rappers are getting raped and the ones who independent cashing out.


someone like Dej Loaf never woulda made it on an arena tour in the 90s/early 2000s off 1 hit... Now she selling out stadiums on the scream tour with Rae Sremmurd and getting $8000+ a club appearance..

Its NEVER been a better time to be a mediocre rapper who will never release a real album
 
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