RAP MOGUL ROSEMOND FILES LIBEL SUIT OVER POLICE INFORMANT ALLEGATIONS
Hip-hop mogul JIMMY ‘HENCHMAN’ ROSEMOND has filed a $110 million (£73.3 million) libel lawsuit against award-winning journalist CHUCK PHILLIPS and the editors of the New York Daily News over an article alleging he served as a police informant.
Phillips was fired as a Los Angeles Times contributor after he wrongfully accused the record executive of setting up rap star Tupac Shakur for a violent 1994 robbery in a 2008 article.
Rapper and label boss Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs was also named in the scandalous piece about the New York studio incident, which ended in an attempt on Shakur’s life.
Phillips and the Times’ publishers were subsequently forced to issue a formal apology to Rosemond and Combs when it was discovered that the writer’s main source of evidence had been based on forged documents by convicted conman James Sabatino - an inmate who claimed to have worked with Rosemond early on in his career. The Times also settled a lawsuit filed by Rosemond over the false accusations.
However, the scandal hit the headlines again in September (10) when a reporter for the New York Daily News claimed to have obtained sealed court documents stemming from 1996 gun charges against Rosemond, which reportedly suggested the music executive had been working as a police informant since the mid-1990s.
In the Daily News article, titled ‘You Don’t Say? No-Snitch Advocate Exposed as Informant’, Rosemond was accused of providing information to the authorities on at least three occasions following his gun bust.
The piece also suggested Rosemond’s then-lawyer argued for leniency when he was sentenced in Los Angeles in 2000 because of his "assistance". He was handed a 19-month prison term.
But Rosemond disputes the details of the article and he has launched a legal fight to clear his name once and for all, holding journalist Phillips responsible for sparking the whole controversy with his alleged inaccurate investigative reporting surrounding the unsolved murders of Shakur and his New York rap rival The Notorious B.I.G., aka Christopher Wallace.
Rosemond’s lawyer David Feinstein tells Vibe.com, "It never fails every year around Tupac’s death that Chuck Phillips raises his fabricated mouth against Jimmy Rosemond but we intend to silence his foul mouth with this lawsuit and bury these tampered minutes and paperwork that Chuck Phillips received from jealous and envious inmates, which is the basis of this fairytale story the Daily News wrote.
"Jimmy Rosemond has paid his dues to society and, since his release from jail a decade ago, he’s been active in his community, working with troubled youths, and has worked extensively abroad in Haiti. The only thing Jimmy Rosemond is guilty of is being an accomplished manager for singers and rappers and now he’s a victim of his own success."
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