Rapper Fetty Wap has been released from federal custody on a $500,000 bond after being arrested for a drug trafficking charge last week. The rapper, whose real name is Willie Junior Maxwell II, rose to prominence in the mid 2010s, with hits such as “679” and “Trap Queen”— the latter of which reached number 2 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart in May of 2015. However, Fetty Wap has recently been facing big legal troubles, after he was charged with running a multi-million dollar bicoastal drug ring. If convicted, Fetty Wap could face a minimum sentence of ten years and a maximum sentence of life in prison.
According to the indictment, which was filed on September 29th and unsealed last week, the rapper— along with five other co-defendants— allegedly distributed cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, and crack cocaine between the months of June 2019 and June 2020. One of his co-defendants include a New Jersey corrections officer and along with the conspiracy charge, the five other co-defendants are also charged with using firearms in connection to the alleged drug ring.
Fetty Wap was taken into custody on October 28th at Citi Field in Queens— right before he was slated to perform at Rolling Loud, according to the Los Angeles Times. The rapper has since pleaded not guilty to the charge and his attorney, Navarro Gray, has stated that they “pray that this is all a big misunderstanding” and hope to “clear things up expeditiously.” However, search warrants have been issued that resulted in the recovery of about $1.5 million in cash, 16 kilograms of cocaine, 2 kilograms of heroin, fentanyl pills, pistols, a rifle and ammunition, according to the DOJ.
According to the indictment, Fetty Wap was a “kilogram level” dealer, and allegedly trafficked the drugs from the West Coast— selling them in New Jersey and Long Island. While the rapper hasn’t made a public statement yet about the charges, authorities are already trying to express the magnitude of the charges brought against him. In a press release, authorities have stated that the drug pipeline allegedly run by Fetty Wap and his six co-defendants has been “contributing to the addiction and overdose epidemic we have seen time and time again tear people’s lives apart.” The authorities have also stated that “[The defendants] were wholesale drug dealers who pumped massive quantities of narcotics into our communities. [and that] they would frequently use cutting agents to process just one of those kilograms of drugs into as many as four even before it was distributed to lower-level dealers, so the magnitude of this operation was enormous.”
Currently, Fetty Wap has been released conditionally, and is currently under GPS monitoring, has been ordered to submit to random drug testing, and to surrender his passport, according to CNN. And while news of his involvement in the alleged drug ring seems to have shocked fans, many of Fetty Wap’s songs feature drug euphemisms, including “Trap Queen,” which references cooking crack using the euphemism “cooking pies”— so we can’t say that he didn’t warn us.
