Janice Turner, the mother of popular performer Sean Kingston, was taken into custody on Thursday after a raid of a Southwest Ranches mansion rented by him.
Officials said that the 61-year-old was detained on various fraud and theft charges and is being held on a $160,000 bond at Broward County’s main jail. Turner was handcuffed and thrown in the back of a BSO vehicle, according to NBC 6 aerial footage.
A lawyer, Dennis Card, informed the publication that the raid has something to do with a case he filed against Kingston for purportedly failing to pay for goods acquired, including a 232-inch TV that Kingston was seen posing in front of in a photo.
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The lawyer said, “He likes having bling, he likes showing off, he’s a showman. My client has a $150,000 television sound system that’s in there, there’s also about $1 million worth of watches that are in there, there’s a $80,000 custom bed that was ordered. This is an organized systematic fraud.”
“He’s got basically a script, he says that he works with Justin Bieber, and that he obviously puts on a big show here, this is a rental house, he doesn’t own it, and he lures people using his celebrity into having them release things without him paying for it and then he simply never pays,” the lawyer, who is representing the company suing Kingston, said.
Card labeled the 34-year-old artist a scammer. He said that Kingston is currently on felony probation for trafficking in stolen property and has judgments against him for obtaining more than $1 million in watches without paying for them.
“This is just an ongoing pattern for Sean,” the attorney further noted. He also claimed that the artist’s mother was implicated in the act.
Hours after Turner’s arrest, Kingston was also arrested while in the middle of performing one of his hits on stage, the Independent reported. The report said the singer was arrested Thursday “without incident” at the U.S. military training area of Fort Irwin, California. The rapper was performing his hit song “Eenie Meenie” during a U.S. Army award ceremony when he was arrested.
On Thursday after the raid became public, the “Beautiful Girls” singer posted a response on Instagram. He wrote, “People love negative energy! I am good and so is my mother!.. my lawyers are handling everything as we speak.”
According to federal court documents, Turner pleaded guilty in January 2006 to four counts of filing fake loan applications and one count of bank fraud involving $132,000 in stolen money that she was forced to repay. She was sentenced to sixteen months in jail, followed by five years on supervised release.
Turner has an Instagram profile called “Mama Kingston Kitchen,” where she sells her own brand of sauce and also features her famous son.
