Former R&B superstar, R. Kelly, has been found guilty of ‘racketeering’ and ‘orchestrating a sex ring.’
On Monday, September 27, the singer was found guilty of all nine counts of the racketeering and sex-trafficking charges against him.
Racketeering is a genre of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a racket) to repeatedly or consistently collect money or other profit.
He was also found guilty of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits the transport of “any woman or girl” across state lines for any “immoral purpose.
GUILTY!
According to The New York Times, the jury deliberated through 14 acts of racketeering, with the prosecution only having to prove two of the 14 acts.
The outlet also reports that Kelly was found guilty of being the ringleader of a decades-long scheme to recruit women and underage girls for sex.
The felonious side of Kelly was documented in a multi-part Netflix series titled, “Surviving R. Kelly.”
Per ‘The Times,’ “after nine hours of deliberations, the jury in the singer’s criminal trial in federal court in Brooklyn convicted him of racketeering and eight violations of an anti-sex trafficking law, after beginning its deliberations Friday afternoon. Mr. Kelly now faces the possibility of decades in prison.”
Back in August, The Blast reported that the singer asked to have his herpes-related crimes dropped.
It does not appear those charges were included in his guilty verdict.
According to legal documents, filed in the Eastern District of New York, Kelly asked that the court throw out the charges for knowingly exposing his sexual partners to the sexually transmitted disease — claiming the legislature didn’t include it in the law because its “Not An Acute, Bacterial Venereal Disease.”
Federal prosecutors charged Kelly with exposing two people to the STD back in March of 2020. The charges were added to a laundry list of other charges, which included several related to sexual crimes with minors and exploiting underage girls.
