Fugees Founder Pras Michél Speaks Out: 'I Never Wanted to Be a Spy'
variety.com"If there was one red flag that something was off that night, Michél says it was the elevator. As a celebrity who has performed before crowds of 100,000, Michél was familiar with being whisked in and out of hotels by security. This was … different.
“I’m going to tell you what was weird to me: the fact that the Four Seasons has a private elevator. I never knew that. They have a private elevator for just certain people,” he says. “But my life leading up to that point felt surreal, so part of that night felt natural.”"
Reminds me FDR and the Waldorf-Astoria: https://www.6sqft.com/theres-a-secret-train-track-hidden-in-...
I'm a little confused about what he actually did. The article mostly speaks about making connections and introducing people to each other. But:
> The concierge then hands him an envelope with orders to circle the block twice before receiving further instructions.
What was in that envelope?
I think that the mention of the billions from Malaysia relates to the story covered in the "Billion Dollar Whale". I really recommend that book.
Many celebrities ended up involved, and it's a story that wouldn't be believed if it were fiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1Malaysia_Development_Berhad_s...At the center of the tale is Jho Low, the wild-spending financier who burst onto the scene in 2013 by backing “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Scorsese and DiCaprio’s $100 million look at financial fraud and bacchanalian excess. As Low’s influence in Hollywood grew, scores of celebrities partied on his private jet, drank his Cristal and accepted his lavish gifts (DiCaprio landed a $3.2 million Picasso and a $9 million Basquiat), at least until his elaborate embezzlement scheme unraveled and he became a fugitive.https://www.amazon.ca/Billion-Dollar-Whale-Fooled-Hollywood/...
He took money from a foreigner to donate to political campaigns and tried to influence politicians at the behest of China, without registering as a foreign agent.
He also refused to take a plea agreement that would've spared him most of this (IIUC). They don't like it when a person doesn't "play ball". And it certainly doesn't help that he's Black.
It also doesn't help that he was a Chinese spy. Or that he assisted the CPC trying to repatriate a Chinese defector to China to be executed.
>Defector
A chinese fraudster who scammed PRC banks that "defected" by claiming to be a dissident, that PRC said for years was a fraudster, who would go on to defraud Americans out of a BILLION dollars, because US state department thought he was some anti CCP dissident with deep insight into the CCP, instead of you know... a fraudster. Though to be fair, both could to be true. I hope US got a billion dollars worth outdated info from him.
It's worded quite badly, but I believe the envelope contained the written instructions to circle the block etc...
"Rapper, Businessman Found Guilty in Back-Channel Lobbying Campaign to Drop 1MDB Investigation and Remove Chinese National from United States, and Conspiring to Make and Conceal Foreign Contributions During 2012 U.S. Presidential Election"
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-entertainer-convicted-enga...
> I'm a little confused about what he actually did.
Launder money? That he deflects when the topic of money comes up is telling enough.
It’s noted a little obliquely in the article that he got paid an ungodly amount of money for his help - at one point, it’s mentioned he got paid $20m to set up a photo op with Obama; elsewhere they suggest $100m total received for his help. I think he deflects on money because it takes a whole lot of sympathy out of his sort of “gee shucks” presentation of all this.
Question: How does a Minimalist spend 100M USD??
A lot of people got lots of money or high-value gifts. Also curiously his advisor (handler?) worked for the US government - was he 100% moonlighting, or performing government-sanctioned activities? They are throwing the book at Pras because he refused to play ball with the plea bargain.
Oh absolutely - I don’t excuse people the consequences of their actions because they were dumb, but this very much reads like Pras was the one guy without a good lawyer in the room.
Interesting read. Took a bit of time to see that it's a kind of pre promotion for an upcoming Hollywood documentary on the man.
The wheel still turns. There's a few similar stories with the line "I never wanted to sell my soul, I just wanted the money"
Nevertheless I'd be curious to see the documentary, the hidden camera of the meetings with the Chinese spy would be very interesting!
Celebrity and money are like a reality distortion field. I hope I never acquire either in large quantities - it does not seem like a desirable thing
Like all we are fortunate enough to receive, the effects upon ourselves are based upon how you use it. Of course, we have to acquire such resources through non-harmful means; e.g. it can't be theft or selling coke.
Regardless, if we use our resources to help others, that happiness will return to us from within us. There is only one source of happiness: to make others happy and then reap the benefits via the universe's natural karmic flow.
Most people are only concerned with selfish desires such that even their charity is for their own benefit, such as their public image or tax breaks. Truly doing something to help another human being -- without any self-concern save reaping the karmic happiness return -- is truly rare on Earth, but once one tastes that sweetest of nectars, one wants nothing else, ever. This world would be a different place if we human beings judged ROI in this most compassionate of ways.
Presumably the guy is distinctively not rich, or he wouldn't have gotten involved in such risky business to make money. Most of the hit songs he's been involved with are based one or more older songs, so he may not make much from royalties.
FTA:
> Adding to his woes, the government seized roughly $80 million from him.
That to me means that he was distinctively rich
I assumed that was money he earned from this spy business, but it's not really clear.
> Presumably the guy is distinctively not rich, or he wouldn't have gotten involved in such risky business to make money.
The more I watch the behavior of the wealthy the more I see that either 1) there is never enough to satisfy them or 2) (more likely) getting it is the thing they enjoy — so why would they stop at some arbitrary point?
I think his wealth or lack of is orthogonal. The article in fact mentions his motivations being more along the lines of enjoying living on the edge, living dangerously (see his documentary work).
What I got from the article is that there's levels of rich, and always someone richer. Also, that a lot of stuff he felt in hindsight he should have paid attention to he dismissed as normal at the time because weird is normal in those circles, and stuff gets weirder as you get into richer circles, at least certain types of them. In other words, he didn't see it as risky business because risky means weird, and it's always weird business.
He was a member of the band The Fugees. Their album The Score sold 22,000,000 copies.
I consider having a seven figure ($ or €) sum in the bank as rich.
> We meet in his sparsely furnished 4,500-square-foot SoHo apartment with floor-to-ceiling views of lower Manhattan
I mean, can't be doing all _that_ badly.
People don't get involved in criminality, in general, out of desperation, but because they enjoy the lifestyle. Hence the hundreds of successful e.g. rappers who end up in prison (or dead) even long after they had far more than enough money that any sense of wanting was far behind them.
> People don't get involved in criminality, in general, out of desperation, but because they enjoy the lifestyle.
ugh. why do you suppose there is a two degrees of magnitude difference in crime between poor and rich nations? there is no connection to theft not sounding that bad when you are starving?
also, are you supposing all the gangs breaking into&robbing homes are actually bored millionaires?
There isn't any such causation between rich and poor countries. Most of Asia is dirt poor, even more so a couple of decades ago, yet crime is extremely scarce.
Even in America alone there are a vast number of people living in extreme poverty. And the overwhelming majority will live perfectly normal lives, even if it means on occasion living off iceberg and ramen, as was the case for myself when growing up.
If poverty/desperation drove crime then there would be vastly more criminals, especially in rural areas, yet criminality remains relatively rare.
You'll find far less tolerance for criminal behavior among those who grew up in poverty, because they are the ones who have lived through it all and seen with their own eyes the sort of people who go down the wrong road. And the fault for going down that road lies with nobody besides those people.
I agree. I think it’s kind of like how we discovered that cheap, abundant, calorie dense foods aren’t good for people. Humans evolved in circumstances where we weren’t ever likely to have as much calorie dense food as we wanted, so we have wiring that tells us to eat as much as we can (which can hurt us).
I think the same is true of positive attention. We’re social creatures, that’s part of how we survive. In the past we wanted to be part of a group, and having status in a social hierarchy could be a matter of life or death. Now that there are billions of people, and social networks make it possible to interact with a LOT of them. Humans evolved in circumstances where we weren’t ever likely to have as much attention as we wanted, so our wiring tells us to glut ourselves on as much attention as we can, which can hurt us (obsession, narcissism, etc.).
Secret money is the best, but hard and rare. Celebrity without money the worst and I fully agree with you that I'd prefer to have neither.
Wealthy people are fairly anonymous to most people unless they actually got their wealth via fame (influencers, actors, entertainment talent). Without looking it up, do you have any idea who the CEO of Coca Cola is? Would you be able to spot him/her (I dont' know either) on the street? Now imagine the armies of $XM annual comp high earners in finance and they're even more anonymous.
I don't doubt that but I'd call that hardly secret. Random people in the street are the least problematic, the ones closest are.
The Mars family is pretty famous for how NOT famous they are.
Surely secret money comes with it's own pressures and paranoia?
Should have said legal secret money. If it just sits there, grows slowly and gives you the piece of mind to have in in case of an emergency I don't see pressure and paranoia.
True, I think for some people it comes with pressure to help family, friends, etc. Even if nobody knows about it, that's a secret you have to keep.
Secret money is hard at a certain scale. Money is property rights and people have to believe your rights exist for them to actually exist. Elon Musk is not physically strong but simply the beneficiary of forces that have convinced the world’s mindless executors of one arbitrary thing in his favor, but could have just as easily convinced them of any arbitrary thing out of his favor.
It’s better to have $5 million than to be broke. That absolutely true. But there is a level of wealth and position where you absolutely must participate in the most evil parts of society to stay where you are. The level of money that you can quietly have is not one that rich people are impressed by. There is a higher level, which you cannot have without the support of society, and the support of society is something you do not get unless you are actively participating in terrible things, either as a willful actor or, more likely in this case, a patsy who usually has no idea what’s going on.
I do wish this article had been more concrete about what those terrible things were, though. And I have no sense of where the man was truly a criminal or just way out of his depth. When people in the arts and sciences get caught up in these things, it tends to be the latter.
> There is a higher level, which you cannot have without the support of society
Is that true?
I get what you are saying. In my mind it is more like: it would be nice to be wealthy, but you don't want to get wealthy enough that you show up on the radar of the world's bad actors.
paragraph 2: please be concrete, this claim is interesting but completely unsubstantiated as currently stated
I don't know what reasonably substantiating such a claim would look like to you, but yeah, there's something to it.
Think of it as game theory; or think of it like simple mob dynamics. Play Wolf or Mafia, and get an idea of how powerful information asymmetry can be.
Look down stream at where our cobalt, our lithium, our chocolate comes from; what we've done to Africa and South America and indigenous people everywhere; look what Epstein did, and who with, and how media covered it; look at the history of colonialism; look at how people who spoke out against Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria/US torture/drone assinations/Israeli occupation and atrocities were and are being treated by the political and media class. Look at how climate protesters are smeared while polluters are green-washed; not sometimes, but as a matter of course. There's not many ways to explain all the above without the original claim as a large factor.
I'd recommend Chomsky, Naomi Klein, John Perkins, Sarah Kendzior and Whitney Webb if you want to learn more.
i’m with you, i’ve read some chomsky, but you are speaking in absolutes. It seems historically true that most, even all wealth has come from amoral means (especially relative to today’s values) but is it absolutely true, and absolutely true today, and in the future? What if means are relative to societal values in that time? For example, I eat chicken, though I feel like I ought not to, and in 100 years I’d be surprised if that is still acceptable to do.
> you are speaking in absolutes.
No I'm not. I said "there's something to it". I'm not OP, and I think OP could be understood to be speaking as "in the vast vast majority of cases" rather than an unbreakable now-and-forever rule. It's wise to interpret people in the most charitable reasonable light, generally.
> but is it absolutely true, and absolutely true today
If it's true in 99% of cases, or 100%, the difference is pretty small. Seems odd to focus on.
And we weren't discussing whether or not this would be true in a hundred years, but what the situation is now and historically. Certainly there is a potential for radical change; I would even call it necessary.
> But there is a level of wealth and position where you ABSOLUTELY MUST participate in the most evil parts of society to stay where you are.
(emphasis added)
I’m a founder of a venture backed seed stage startup, as a missionary not mercenary founder i do not seek extraordinary wealth but my shareholders do and I have fiduciary duty as well as substantial ownership. I struggle to accept without clear demonstration that my mission’s success means I “ABSOLUTELY MUST participate in the most evil parts of society”. This is a very strong claim, I don’t think it applies to me!
Being a founder of a startup, even a relatively successful one, doesn't put you into the same class as the top 0.1% of billionaires.
At the very least you have to exploit the labor of the bottom 99% of society in order to attain 1% wealth.
When you get to the level of Musk, I think it's almost self-evident that it isn't possible to attain that much wealth, without being directly responsible for a significant fraction of all the evil in the world.
That's slightly different from "participating in evil parts of society" but I think that it certainly would be difficult maintain that kind of wealth but somehow avoid participating in the activities of your peers.
Not true, there are edge cases. Some billionaires have lived very frugal lives - such as the founder of dollar stores. There was also a multi billionaire who lived middle class and gave away his whole fortune towards end of life
Celebrity can be used to create ripples in the ideation of the masses, however, but that's a hard row to hoe, and only a rare few have the wisdom or good intentions to know where to begin. As well, the forces that facilitate celebrity tend to promote those who fit this modern apotheosis of vapid desire.
William Gibson, as usual, summed it up perfectly in Idoru:
“[Slitscan's audience] is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”
Recent events, especially here in America, only ever prove Mr. Gibson's understanding of the widespread lowness of the human condition. But all his "prescience" is really due to his profound humanity.
I watched Grace Hopper’s declassified talk recently and was struck by how often she was right on the money (not all the times, she was also way off on some things), but in a lot of things that sounded truly prescient, she was often emphasising that these things were already happening. A lot of prescience is just paying enough attention.
> A lot of prescience is just paying enough attention
Terry Gilliam said much the same thing when talking about making Brazil in the 1980s.
"People think I am a prophet and that Brazil described the world we’re living in now a few years ago. But we were living in that world then; people just weren’t paying attention the way they do now."
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/magazine/terry-gilliam-is...
If you happen to acquire large quantities of money please let me know, I can take that burden off you. ;-)
No, no, it is much too burdensome. Let me take this burden that it does not crush you, brother world2vec.
No, no, no brother brookst - I insist, you don't need to suffer.
Brothers, brookst & world2vec: it would break my heart to watch you both suffer from the pressures worldly wealth and filthy lucre can bring.
Why not let me take it off both of your hands so you can live the ascetic lives you crave? Deal?
> Celebrity and money are like a reality distortion field.
Or it reveals actual reality: if you have lots of money, you probably don't have as many restrictions on what you can and can't do, so it may allow your "true self" to be actualized. Your true self may not be as noble as you think.
Many were horrible people before they became celebrities, you just didn’t hear about them.
Pro-tip - if you started reading this and are interested in what the guy did you should check out his wikipedia article.
Link to relevant section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pras#Legal_issues
Would be interesting to learn how many other celebrities have had similar experiences but have not been caught. Given the tradecraft described, this wasn't their first rodeo.
That was a better read than I expected, thank you for sharing!
In the genre of: "post-conviction victim-image building". See also Liz Holmes pieces etc.
Not passing any judgement on this particular persons story, just a bit funny.
Yeah.
Nothing will ever be as funny as Holmes' deep voice, though. The fact that she conned so many people is really one of the greatest modern examples of just how effing stupid most people are, especially those with a fair bit of power and money.
Carreyrou's book and pod are truly excellent.
I hated that voice. At first, I told myself it wasn’t right to hate someone’s voice so much because I assumed it had been something she couldn’t control, and in fact it made her slightly more impressive to me that she had gotten anywhere with such an uncharismatic voice. Then I found out that, no, she made it up. All fake.
I have a cousin with two special needs children. When I was first told that people in Silicon Valley fake neurological disabilities for clout, I didn’t believe it. I’ve worked in finance in the 1980s and ‘90s and I’ve seen some low behavior, but the fake speech issues of Holmes and the fake autism of Bankman-Fried are the sorts of things that even investment bankers would call unethical.
Did Holmes fake speech issues? I thought her voice was intentionally changes so that she sounded more assertive/less feminine
I understand. Sadly, the level of despicable ethics goes far deeper than that, my friend.
But I never hate, because hate is a poison to one's own soul, and must always be avoided. I do, however, feel a hot righteous anger at those that manipulate others for personal gain, especially when it's combined with callous disregard for their victims' well-being.
I wish more people were like you, who have found reasons to grow their compassion. Peace be with you, and your cousin's family.
Hassen macht hässllich ie hate makes you ugly.
Yes, absolutely, but it is every person's choice to become, should they (and their culture) wish.
It also damages our perceptual clarity. When Jesus said to "Love your enemies", there is a very pragmatic aspect to this beyond just trying to show them a better way. We can only see a person clearly if we love them; otherwise, we will see them through the lens of our prejudices, enmities, greed, ... whatever.
Selfless love also does not mean letting the Nazis of the world steamroll you and then proceed to dominate the next underpriviledged group. No, compassion demands that we protect the innocent, including ourselves. First, however, we must self-evolve ourselves back towards innocence by embracing universal -- but carefully watchful -- compassion.
It's a tricky business, being human :-)
But, wow, the wonders!
Seems FBI didn't confiscate all his money since there was some left for this PR piece. Still didn't understand exactly what he did wrong but I guess this article's purpose is not to tell us that.
-edit- justice.gov says: "Michel was convicted of conspiracy, concealment of material facts, making false entries in records, witness tampering, and serving as an unregistered agent of a foreign power."
I only managed to get part way through the article before some video overlay for a vodka brand kept trying to load and crashed the page. I tried again as the article was interesting/ same thing. Not so interested to try again. These moments of how realization of how bad some parts of the web are, reLly frustrate
I just turn on Reading Mode when that happens so I can at least read the content. I find that most websites don’t have circumventions for it (at least the Safari Reader Mode on my phone).
That didn’t work on my iPhone.
Obviously the AI that wrote the ad code has become sentient and it is trying to break free.
Holy word salad of an article. Surely the writer got paid to make it long and flowery.
I still don't know what the guy actually did.
yeah I had to google it
Maybe it's because i'm distorted by my profession but I like articles that describe facts in chronological order.
Here's it's as if there was a montage for an action movie with flashbacks and scenes and you're supposed to put the story back together
100m USD? No one makes that much money legitimately without a product and a large staff to show for it.
LOL. Go to genius.com. Pull up: Pras - Ghetto Superstar album. Ctrl-F "Dirty Cash"
Songs on that album that contain the phrase "Dirty Cash":
Blue Angels
Cant Stop the Shining Pt 2
Get Your Groove On
Frowsey Pt 2
For the Love of This
Dirty Cash (Instrumental, lol)
Yeah eh Yeah eh
Avenues
Another One Bites the Dust
It's a solid dope album though, great production values if you skip the filler interludes.
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
For anyone else confused by what actually happened, here is a summary compiled from various sources around the conviction and the related 1MDB scandal:
---
Jho Low, a Malaysian financier, masterminded one of the largest embezzlement scandals in history through 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a sovereign wealth fund intended to spur economic development. Over $4.5 billion was siphoned from the fund to finance a lavish lifestyle, high-profile investments, and extensive political influence campaigns. Fleeing justice in Malaysia, Low focused on cementing his power in the U.S., including efforts to influence the political landscape and suppress investigations into his crimes.
Pras Michel, a founding member of the hip-hop group Fugees, became entangled in Low's schemes, leading to his conviction on 10 criminal counts. Michel first met Low in 2006, and by 2012, he was a key player in Low’s efforts to use his ill-gotten wealth to influence U.S. politics. Low funneled $20 million to Michel to gain access to then-President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. Knowing direct contributions from foreign nationals were illegal, Michel orchestrated a scheme using straw donors and political committees to route Low’s money into the campaign. Michel also used funds to buy seats at fundraising events and pressured wealthy acquaintances to participate.
By 2017, Michel’s involvement deepened as he acted on behalf of both Low and the Chinese government without registering as a foreign agent. In exchange for millions, Michel attempted to influence the Trump administration to drop the U.S. investigation into Low and to extradite Chinese dissident Miles Guo, a target of Beijing. These actions violated federal law, which requires registration for such foreign lobbying efforts.
Michel was also convicted of laundering millions of dollars tied to the 1MDB embezzlement and attempting to obstruct justice by pressuring straw donors to support his version of events during the investigation. The trial revealed Michel’s use of burner phones to contact witnesses, an act he later admitted was misguided. His defense argued that Michel was unaware of the legal boundaries and acted on bad advice from his attorney, including the use of artificial intelligence to craft his closing argument—a controversial decision.
The prosecution presented Michel as a knowing participant in a broader conspiracy to influence U.S. politics and aid foreign interests. Testimony from high-profile witnesses, including actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, underscored the scale of the scheme. Michel was ultimately convicted of conspiracy, campaign finance violations, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, money laundering, and witness tampering.
>extradite Chinese dissident Miles Guo, a target of Beijing
Who let's not forget, would go on to hang with Steve Bannon during the Trump years and use influence to build up scams to defraud 1,000s of gullible anti-PRC Americans (and others) out of a billion with a B dollars - he was the fraudster CCP claimed he was all along (scammed banks in PRC), albiet a connected one with some limited insight into old CCP drama, hence US treated him as valuble anti CCP dissident. Truly top kek leopardsatemyface development that no one would have forseen.
I read that his band mate - a Ms Lauren Hill - was also sent up state for tax evasion. Classy bunch.
Lauryn Hill is a fantastic talent. Like many other fantastic talents before and after her, at some point she lost humility and her mental state degraded.
She is completely nuts. Here is a video of Grammy and Emmy winner Robert Glasper talking in detail about just how nuts she is. It is really entertaining.
All three of them are legends. The Score remains one of the greatest and most influential contributions to contemporary music. The mastery of technique they demonstrate on that album is just about absolute.
Cannabis is a medicine, and, as such, must be used as minimally as possible, and never in combination with alcohol. And, of course, cocaine is no damn good for anyone, and lsd has been known to really wreck some people.
All that said, being Black in America (and lots of other places) is a never-ending stress factory. We must change our racial societal structures and perspectives to end this centuries-long callous misery.