New York City rapper Casanova has surrendered to federal authorities for his alleged role in a gang-related racketeering case, according to reports.
The 34-year-old rapper, whose real name is Caswell Senior, turned himself in to the FBI late Wednesday after being indicted a day earlier on charges of conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and firearms possession.
He has since pleaded not guilty.
Authorities accuse Casanova and 18 other suspects of belonging to the Untouchable Gorilla Stone Nation, a street gang that operates in New York City and other parts of New York state that carried out multiple gang-related crimes including murder, racketeering, drugs, firearms and fraud, reports said.
Casanova’s defense attorney, James Kousouros, said his client had been “painted with a broad brush of conspiratorial conduct” and declared him innocent of the charges.
“He expects to be exonerated,” Kousouros told The Associated Press. “He denies any of the charges, to the extent we can even understand them. Here’s a man who surrendered in a case for which he’s looking at life in prison, which is consistent with the act of an innocent man.”
Casanova is currently under contract with Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by hip-hop mogul Jay-Z.
One of the alleged members of the crew was charged in connection with the Sept. 21 slaying of a 15-year-old in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Casanova was not charged in the murder.
The others face a litany of felony charges, among them assault, drug distribution and weapons possession. Court papers detail a robbery at gunpoint and various retaliatory shootings among other crimes. Two were also charged with falsely using other people’s identities to file for COVID-19 unemployment benefits.
This is not the rapper’s first brush with the law.
He previously served nearly eight years in prison in New York for robbery, The Associated Press reported.
Raised in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, Casanova is known for hits including “Don’t Run,” released in 2016 and, more recently, “Set Trippin.” He is currently signed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation label and released a first full-length album, “Behind These Scars,” last year.
The criminal charges are not the first Casanova has faced.
A report by Newsweek said Casanova recently appeared on Revolt Radio’s “The Breakfast Club,” where he revealed that he was introduced to gang life at a young age. Moreover, the rapper’s bio on the Roc Nation website says Casanova was committing robberies by age 11.
The profile states:
“Casanova’s commanding presence was shaped by his Flatbush upbringing, where he learned to deal with a variety of people and situations at an early age. Although his family provided him with a nice home and everything he wanted as a child, the corrupting allure of instant gratification and the high of peer acceptance had him committing robberies by the age of 11. Casanova’s taste for crime finally caught up with him in 2006, when he was sent to prison at 19 on a robbery conviction. He worked construction jobs to take care of his family following his release in 2014, but felt unsatisfied with life.”
Last year, Casanova was dropped from the lineup of a hip-hop festival after New York City police sent the organizers of the event a letter citing safety concerns if he and four other rappers were to take the stage, The New York Times reported. The rappers were said to be “affiliated with recent acts of violence citywide.” One of them, Pop Smoke, was later fatally shot in Los Angeles.
Casanova once had beef with fellow Brooklyn rapper Tekashi69, then a member of the rival Nine Trey Gansta Bloods, that resulted in a confrontation at the Barclays Center in April 2018 in which a gunshot was fired.
No one was hurt in the shooting, which happened during a boxing match between Adrien Broner and Jessie Vargas, but a member of Tekashi69′s gang later pleaded guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon in aid of racketeering in the shooting.
Tekashi reportedly mentioned Casanova during his controversial 2019 testimony against his former gang associates, and Casanova later said he confronted him in October about it. Casanova told the Hot97 Morning Show that “He took trolling to a whole other level. But at the end of the day, when I spoke to him, he was like, “Cas, I don’t even know you.” He was speaking proper English. And I said this is really a little kid.”
Tekashi69, whose legal name is Daniel Hernandez, fell into his own legal troubles when he was charged in a separate federal racketeering case. Like Casanova, Tekashi69 had an outlaw reputation he’d curated online but received a lenient prison sentence after cooperating in the case against the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods.
Information provided by The Associated Press was used to supplement this report.
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