Pras Michel

Prakazrel "Pras" Michel, a member of the hip-hop group Fugees, was convicted in federal court on April 26, 2023, on 10 criminal counts including conspiracy, witness tampering, concealment of material facts, making false entries in records, and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign power. These charges stemmed from an illegal foreign influence campaign involving Malaysian financier Jho Low and officials from the People’s Republic of China. Michel orchestrated schemes to funnel millions of dollars of foreign money into the 2012 U.S. presidential election through straw donors to conceal the source. Additionally, he engaged in a back-channel lobbying campaign—beginning around 2017—to influence the U.S. government to drop embezzlement investigations into Low regarding the 1MDB scandal and to facilitate the return of a Chinese dissident to China. On November 20, 2025, a federal judge in the District of Columbia sentenced Michel to 14 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to forfeit nearly $65 million. Michel, who maintains his innocence and is pursuing an appeal, surrendered to the Federal Correctional Institution in Safford, Arizona, on April 30, 2026, to begin his sentence.