By Tai Saint-Louis
A U.S. District Judge in Detroit handed down a two and a half year prison sentence for celebrity Hip-Hop jeweler Jacob Arabov on Tuesday (Jun 24). The decision comes eight months after Jacob the Jeweler, as Arabov is better known, entered into a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s office for his alleged involvement with the Black Mafia Family.
“I feel ashamed that I broke the laws of this country, a country that has been so good for me,” Arabov said at the sentencing. “I will carry this shame for the rest of my life.”
In June 2006, a DEA task force arrested Arabov in New York after a warrant had been issued for his arrest in Michigan’s Easter District Court a month earlier. His arrest was one of the 41 in total to result from a federal indictment, which tied the defendants to BMF, charging that they contributed to the bicoastal drug trafficking organization’s operations.
Arabov was charged with conspiring to launder $270 million in drug profits. As part of his plea deal, he admitted to falsifying records and giving false statements to federal prosecutors, in exchange for the dismissal of the money laundering charges. Per the plea agreement, Arabov was to spend between three years and one month to three years and 10 months in prison.
Judge Avern Cohn arrived at the reduced sentence handed down today after taking into consideration Arabov’s extensive charitable contributions and several letters of support written on the New York businessman’s behalf.
The 43-year-old Russian immigrant, whose clientele and friends include Hip-Hop a-listers, mainstream celebrities, socialites and politicians alike, remains free on bond at this time. He has been ordered to report to prison on January 15.
Arabov was also ordered to pay a fine of $50,000 and to make a $2 million forfeiture payment to the government, which his attorney turned over to an IRS agent present at the sentencing.
Arrests in the case against members of the BMF organization started with the October 2005 arrests of brothers Terry and Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory. The two stood accused of running the organization’s Atlanta and Los Angeles hub’s, which originated in Detroit, and also operated in Orlando, FL and St. Louis, MO.
The Black Mafia Family is believed to have generated an estimated $270 million in cocaine sales across the country. The 41 indicted defendants are accused of charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and conspiracy.