As expected, Ja Rule was released from prison in upstate New York today. However, he was promptly taken to a federal prison.
The Queens rapper, born Jeffery Atkins, served out most of his two year sentence for a gun possession charge under protective custody at Mid-State Correctional Facility. However, he still has time to serve on a 28-month sentence he was handed after pleading guilty to tax evasion charges; thus he isn’t coming home, just yet.
The Associated Press reports:
Ja Rule may have less than six months left and may be eligible for a halfway house, defense attorney Stacey Richman said. An order to pay $1.1 million in back taxes is one of the main reasons he wants to get back to work, she said.
“Many people are looking forward to experiencing his talent again,” Richman said.
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Ja Rule, who went to the prison in Marcy in June 2011, is getting out at his earliest release date, state correction spokeswoman Linda Foglia said. He had two misbehavior reports for unauthorized phone calls in February 2012 and had work assignments on lawn and grounds crews and participated in education programs, she said.
Around the time of those aforementioned “unauthorized phone calls” (January 2012), Rule called in to Vlad TV.
In March 2011, the “Holla Holla” rapper admitted in federal court that he didn’t pay taxes on the $3 million he earned between 2004 and 2006 while he lived in New Jersey. The previous year, Ja Rule took a plead guilty to attempted criminal possession of a weapon after NYPD found a loaded .40-caliber semiautomatic gun in his car during a traffic stop after a concert at The Beacon Theatre in Manhattan back in 2007.
Early last year, Ja Rule told the New York Daily News that jail was “amazing” when discussing the connections he was making in the bing.
In early 2013, while incarcerated, Ja Rule released an album titled Pain Is Love 2 that received little fanfare.
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Photo: New York Daily News
