The Fugee, the Fugitive and the FBI

How rapper Pras Michél got entangled in one of the century's great financial scandals

-  Jason Leopold, Anthony Cormier and Matthew Campbell

1 The phone call awoke Pras Michél in the middle of a spring night in 2017. His “cousin from China” needed to meet, the woman on the line said. The caller was an ex-girlfriend who Michél, a rapper, producer and member of legendary hip-hop group the Fugees, hadn’t spoken to in years. He grew up in a Haitian family in New Jersey and doesn’t have a cousin from China, but he knew what the message meant.

Michél dressed and called a car to take him to the Four Seasons Hotel on 57th Street in Manhattan. The front desk clerk handed him a note. It instructed him to exit the hotel and circle the block twice, scanning to see if he was being tailed. Michél did as he was told and returned to the clerk, who gave him a room key. He went up to an empty suite and waited.

After about 25 minutes there was a knock on the door. An austere-looking Chinese security agent in a suit gave Michél a second room key and told him to go to the penthouse. Inside, another agent took Michél’s phones and placed them in a pouch. A table and two chairs sat in the middle of the room.

“They can’t kill me in the Four Seasons,” Michél said to himself.

Soon a short, chubby man with wavy hair arrived, surrounded by more security personnel. Michél had met him before. He was Sun Lijun, China’s vice minister of public security. Sun began shouting in Chinese. An interpreter translated for Michél: “Who the f--- do the US government think they are?”