Kingston, 34, and his mother, Janice Turner, 61, have been charged with conducting an organised scheme to defraud, grand theft, identity theft and related crimes, according to arrest warrants released by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. The two were arrested on Thursday after a SWAT team raided Kingston’s rented mansion in suburban Fort Lauderdale. Turner was arrested in the raid, while Kingston was arrested at Fort Irwin, an army training base in California’s Mojave Desert where he was performing.
Kingston, who had a number one hit with Beautiful Girls in 2007 and performed with Justin Bieber on the song Eenie Meenie, is being held at a California jail awaiting his return to Florida. Robert Rosenblatt, lawyer for the Jamaican-American performer and his mother, said on Friday that Kingston would return voluntarily if allowed, “which would save the state the expense of extradition and the costs of travel for the detectives and Sean”. His mother was being held on Friday at the Broward County jail on a 160,000-dollar (£125,500) bond.
“We look forward to addressing these (charges) in court and are confident of a successful resolution for Sean and his mother,” Mr Rosenblatt said. Specific details of Kingston’s and Turner’s alleged crimes are not included in the warrants, but the documents say that from October to March they stole almost 500,000 dollars (£392,420) in jewellery, more than 200,000 dollars (£156,968) from Bank of America, 160,000 dollars (£12.