Tekashi 69 in court in October 2018. He has not been photographed for the best part of a year
Tekashi 69’s sentencing hearing has begun with testimony from an innocent bystander who was shot in the foot in a gang shooting the rapper was involved in.
The rapper appeared in court with his lawyers to be sentenced for charges including attempted murder, racketeering and armed robbery.
He had been facing 47 years behind bars. But prosecutors dropped two firearms offenses, which brings the mandatory minimum of the other crimes down to 10 years.
It remains unclear how he will be rewarded for cooperating with the government.
His attorneys asked for time served with three years of supervised release and said he would disappear if he was given it.
‘When you get to know him, he’s not a bad kid. If given a second chance by your Honor, I believe you will never see him again. I’m asking for Time Served and three years of supervised release,’ defense attorney Lance Lazzaro said.
Assistant US Attorney Michael Longyear who lauded him as a ‘high profile government witness’ who helped take down the ‘Godfather’ of the Nine Trey gang.
Prosecutors said he would no longer be safe to roam free as he had before and that he had to abandon his family, including a baby, immediately after agreeing to work with the government.
At Wednesday’s hearing, the bystander- named only as ‘LL’ to protect his identity, cried on the stand as he told how he could have died in the July 2018 Brooklyn shooting.
‘I was just an innocent bystander, shot in the foot. The bullet could have hit me in my head,’ he said, stifling sobs.
‘Everyday I wake up, I have scars on my back. I was out of work. The actions took a lot of me. I still have to go to the doctors. And for him to sit up here. I want to see him apologize.
‘My mother could have lost her daughter,’ he said, according to Inner City News which attended the hearing.
He called the musician the ‘mastermind’ and said: ‘I have bruises on me. I have to look at myself. I just want an apology. It took a lot of me to come here.
‘I was just an innocent bystander, shot in the foot. The bullet could have hit me in my head,
Innocent bystander named only as ‘L.L.’ who was shot in the foot by a stray bullet in a gang shooting Tekashi was involved in in July 2018
‘I want to face him. I want him to know, He hurt me. He hurt me!’
Judge Paul A. Engelmayer thanked him for appearing.
‘I can see how hard this was on you. I am sorry that happened to you.
‘I appreciate the courage, and I mean that word deliberately, that it took to come here,’ he said.
Lance Lazzaro, one of Tekahsi’s lawyers, said he would make his mission to do good work and try to dissuade people from joining gangs if he was released.
‘Mr Hernandez sits before you today, given a second chance. The only that comes from being a gang member is a life in jail.
‘That will be his message, if given a second chance. He has tried to do the right thing,’ he said.
He went on to describe his troubled childhood and told how he went to bed hungry because his family was poor. After his stepfather was murdered, he started working in a deli but gave ‘every dime’ to his mother, Lazzaro said.
The family would go to church every Sunday and Tekashi learned to sing there, the lawyer claimed. When he failed to make money as a clean cut singer, the lawyer said, he changed his image to become a gangster.
Then, after the release of his song Gummo, he became involved with the gang.
‘Maybe joining Nine Trey contributed to him becoming a star. But it was the worse decision he ever made. It has resulted in his imprisonment,’ he said.
Lazzaro added that the rapper has already been given a life sentence because he will live in fear of being murdered forever.
‘He will always have to have full time security. This is different than the normal cooperator. He’s a target for any gang member.
‘He’s got a life long sentence,’ he said.
Wednesday’s sentencing brings an end to the long-winded legal saga that has eclipsed the young New Yorker’s music career and entertained the hip hop community since he was arrested in 2018.
In November 2018, Hernandez was charged with six federal crimes including racketeering and firearms offenses.
The indictment named him and five other Nine Trey members and it outlined the gang’s alleged involvement in drug sales and two shootings in New York City.
The rapper flipped against the others and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to six counts which, together, held a maximum sentence of 47 years behind bars.
He then testified at the trial of the only two who did not plead guilty and helped secure their conviction. Since then, he has been waiting his fate in jail.
He pleaded with the judge to show him mercy and wrote a groveling letter last week asking for just that.
Two of his victims however wrote to the court to beg for the opposite. They said they were still ‘traumatized’ by an April 2018 armed robbery he was involved in.
Tekashi had been waiting nervously in jail before Wednesday’s decision and was in the dark about what sentence he would receive, sources told TMZ earlier this week.
During his testimony he described how he joined the Nine Treys to gain street credibility in exchange for a cut of his music industry earnings.
Defense lawyers attorneys for Ellison and Mack attempted to cast doubt on Tekashi’s damning account by suggesting it was embellished because he hopes it will earn him a break at his own sentencing, where he faces up to 47 years in prison.
The rapper was labeled a snitch on social media after reeling off the names of other stars he says were involved in the gang, including Cardi B (who denies any association with the gang) and Jim Jones.
His testimony was so unreserved it prompted many to question how safe he would be on the outside, once whatever prison term he negotiated with the government is complete.
THE RISE AND FALL OF TEKASHI 69, FROM AN ECCENTRIC INSTAGRAM STAR TO GANGSTERS’ PET BEFORE HE LOST IT ALL AS A GOVERNMENT ‘SNITCH’
Tekashi 69 grew up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and dropped out of school after the 8th grade, he says to help his mother pay rent after the death of his father when he was 13.
In an interview about his childhood in 2017, he told the No Jumper podcast: ‘My pops died in eighth grade, and I just started bugging in school. was 13. I was waiting for my pops to come back home, and he never came.’
He started working and eventually turned to selling drugs to make money. Soon afterwards, he adopted his alter ego that was based on his obsession with Japanese culture.
Tekashi69 was born and he began chronicling his life on social media. After amassing 15million Instagram followers, he started rapping.
Tekashi 69 first built his fan base then turned to music after harvesting a following of 14.4million on Instagram
In court, he described his persona as one of a ‘scumbag’. He has the numbers 69 tattooed hundreds of times across his body – including on his face – and frequently refers to its sexual connotations.
In photos, he posed with guns, money, drugs and alcohol.
All of it was for ‘shock value’, he told the court, and he is in fact ‘Danny, a nice kid from Brooklyn.’
In court, he said his rap career began when someone told him he looked ‘cool’.
‘At the store I was working in, Stay Fresh Grill, there was a guy by the name Peter Rogers always, always coming in there, buying things like tilapia, peanuts, stuff like that.
‘He asked me if I, if I made music, if I rap. I was like,
‘No. And he was like: Well, you got the image for it. You look cool. I was like, you know, I took it into consideration, and we started making music with the guy,’ he said.
LEGAL WOES BEGIN
The rapper was arrested first in 2015 for taking part in the production and dissemination of a sex tape involving a 13-year-old girl.
He was not the man who had sex with her, and was given a probation sentence for his role because he had shown ‘remorse’.
The sentencing occurred in October 2018. He had already been arrested while awaiting sentencing for it for assault and for driving without a license.
In November that year, federal prosecutors who had been investigating the Nine Trey gang charged Tekashi in their indictment.
He was put in jail and, the next day, made a deal with prosecutors to inform on the others charged in exchange for leniency.
Before his troubles with the law, Tekashi had found some success with his expletive-laden rap songs Stoopid and Dummy.
THE CASE AGAINST THE NINE TREY GANGSTA BLOODS
Tekashi was one of five people charged by federal prosecutors in a November 2018 indictment.
An additional six were later charged. In total, 11 were arrested and charged as part of the case.
All but two pleaded guilty to a variety of crimes including racketeering, drugs offenses and firearms offenses.
Some have been sentenced and some, like Tekashi, are waiting for their sentenced.
It is unclear if any of the other defendants cut deals like he did to win leniency for themselves.
The 11 charged were; Jamel Jones aka Mel Murda, Kifano Jordan aka Shotti, Jensel Butler aka Ish, Daniel Hernandez aka Tekashi 69, Fuguan Lovick aka Fu Banga, Faheem Walter aka Crippy, Dernard Butler, aka Drama, Kintea McKenzie aka Kooda B, Roland Martin aka Roe Murda, Anthony Ellison aka Harv and Aljermiah Mack aka Nuke.
Mack and Ellison are the only two who did not plead guilty. Their trial is where Tekashi testified.
According to prosecutors’ indictment, they were all part of the violent Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods and committed, among other things, murder, robberies and drurg trafficking.
‘This gang…wreaked havoc on New York City, engaging in brazen acts of violence.
‘Showing reckless indifference to others’ safety, members of the gang were allegedly involved in robberies and shootings, including a shooting inside the crowded Barclay’s Center, and a shooting in which an innocent bystander was hit,’ U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in November last year.
THE TRIAL AND TESKASHI’S TESTIMONY
The trial began in September with Tekashi serving as the state’s primary witness.
Over three days, he let rip on former gang mates.
On the first day of his testimony, he identified both defendants as members of the gang and said that while he was a part of it, he’d never shot anyone.
‘We participated in a lot of crimes. Robberies, assaults, drugs,’ he said on the first day.
He said he believed they kept him around as a witness to what they were allegedly doing because he was rich and famous.
‘That’s what people liked. It was just a formula, a blueprint that I found that worked,’ he said.
On day two, he went further. At times he impersonated some of the other gang members as he recalled conversations he’d had with them, speaking so frantically and becoming so easily distracted that he had to be refocused by attorneys.
He translated street slang for the jury and listed the senior leadership of the gang by name without hesitation.
He also described being kidnapped by Ellison, one of the defendants, during a gang dispute over who would help run his career.
‘I had mad thoughts going through my head,’ he said. He claimed he was being ‘extorted’ by the gang and that he turned on them because of it.
The defense attorneys questioned his version of the story, particularly when he said he escaped by jumping out of a moving car and into another, begging to be whisked away to safety.
The prosecutor played the security footage and asked Tekashi to identify the people in it
Tekashi said he and his entourage were at Barclays to watch an Adrien Broner fight when they ran into Casanova’s crew in a tunnel under the venue and a brawl broke out
The final day of his testimony was perhaps the most shocking.
It was then that he named Cardi B and Jim Jones as other members of the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods.
He had been asked if he joined the gang to further his career and answered ‘yes’.
Lawyers then asked him if he ‘knew’ that Cardi B had also been in the gang. He replied ‘yes’ but said he did not pay attention to her career.
Cardi denied his allegations on Twitter, saying she had never been part of that gang but that she was part of ‘Brim’.
He also implicated Jim Jones, another rapper, by identifying his voice while being played a recording of a conversation.
HOW HIP HOP REACTED
Since he testified against his former colleagues, shocked rappers have been quick to distance themselves from Tekashi and to undermine his position in the industry.
Many have described him as a ‘hungry’ internet star who clung to fame.
Snoop Dogg described him as a ‘rat’ and compared him to Martha Stewart, his unlikely co-host on a VH1 cooking show.
Cardi hits back: Although Cardi’s rep denied her affiliation to the Bloods, the Bronx rapper took to Twitter to say otherwise in a since-deleted post writing: ‘You just said it yourself…Brim not 9 Trey. I never been 9 trey or associated with them’
She also liked this tweet saying Cardi B was affiliation with the Brim Bloods, not the 9 Trey crew Tekashi ran with
Sorry, I don’t know him! Cardi B threw shade at Tekashi on Thursday sharing this video of Keke Palmer’s Vanity Fair interview where she scoffs and says: ‘I don’t know who this man is. I mean he could be walking down this street, I wouldn’t know a thing. Sorry to this man’
‘As we watch Tekashi 69 (or whatever his name is) snitch on EVERYBODY, I invite you all to remember Martha Stewart snitched on NOT ONE soul during her trial.
‘Baby girl kept it 10 toes down and ate that prison sentence by herself, like the true baddie she is,’ read a meme he posted.
He captioned it: ‘That’s my M. F. Home girl…solid as a rocc’ (sic).
Stewart was jailed for five months for charges relating to insider trading in 2004.
WHAT HAPPENS FOR HIM NOW?
Tekashi has said he will not enter witness protection because he wants to maintain his public persona.
He said he would foot the bill of his own security and that he’d have bodyguards round the clock.
Whether or not he’ll be able to afford it is a different question.
The rapper’s net worth is mysterious. Some say he is worth around $10million and others put his fortune significantly lower at around $1million.
In either case, his no-doubt mountainous legal bills will take a chunk out of whatever money he has, leaving a shrinking pot for round-the-clock protection.
As for who will want to make music with him now or endorse him, the prospects are bleak.
Now a pariah in the hip hop and rap world, the self-proclaimed ‘scumbag’ no longer has the gang-bolstered Instagram profile he relied on to push his music and his stage personality before the trial.