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Ja Rule Reportedly Facing IRS Lawsuit Over $3 Million Tax Debt

Ja Rule
By: Yohance Kyles (@HUEYmixwitRILEY)Category: News

One of the organizers of the disastrous Fyre Festival might be in financial trouble.

Is Ja Rule once again having an issue paying his taxes? A new report claims the rapper (born Jeffrey Atkins) is being sued by the United States government for a federal tax debt of $3,139,237.76 for the years of 2005-2010 and 2012-2017.

The entertainment website Radar Online reportedly has court documents that show the Internal Revenue Service is seeking to collect that $3 million from Ja Rule. According to the outlet, the IRS claims the Queens-raised rapper refused to pay the money.

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Ja Rule is not the only individual named in the legal papers, according to Radar. His wife, Aisha Atkins, is also accused of stiffing Uncle Sam and their fellow Americans out of taxes. The IRS supposedly wants the court to enter a judgment against the Atkins couple.

This is not the first time Ja Rule has been connected to tax evasion during his three-decade career in entertainment. In July 2011, he received a 28-month prison sentence for failing to pay $1.1 million in taxes on more than $3 million earnings between 2004 and 2006.

A year earlier, Ja Rule pled guilty to a weapon possession charge resulting from a 2007 arrest in New York. The Pain Is Love album creator was allowed to serve the two-year state sentence and the federal sentence concurrently. He was eventually set free from Ray Brook Federal Prison in May 2013.

Ja Rule also faced accusations of scamming would-be concertgoers and Bahamian businesses with the ill-fated Fyre Festival of 2017. While the event was promoted as a luxury experience in paradise, it turned out to be a disaster that left travelers stranded with no food, contractors without compensation, and local vendors in debt.

Both Ja Rule and his partner Billy McFarland were hit with multiple lawsuits over the Fyre fiasco. One group of attendees recently won a $2 million class-action settlement. In 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in federal prison for wire fraud.

Ja Rule repeatedly insisted he was not responsible for the failure of the Fyre Festival. However, the longtime Murder Inc. Records representative was heard in Netflix’s Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened documentary at a team meeting saying Fyre organizers’ misleading promotional tactics were not fraud just “false advertising.”

The 45-year-old reality show star is still attempting to get paid off the botched concert. In March, Ja Rule announced he was selling artwork associated with McFarland’s Fyre Media as an NFT. The East Coaster even said he is open to doing another music festival. In addition, Ja is advertising his Iconn talent booking app.