Kanye West Subpoenaed To Testify In Upcoming Former Employee’s Fraud Trial
Kanye West has reportedly been subpoenaed to testify at an upcoming federal trial over the alleged fraud perpetrated by one of his former employees.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the 44-year-old rapper/producer has been called as a witness at Arjun Dhillon’s trial. Dhillon is accused of using Ye’s name in an attempt to swindle a quarter of a million dollars from a rich philanthropist running an online charity campaign.
While West is only peripherally involved in the case, his testimony could raise eyebrows at Chicago’s downtown federal courthouse. Previously, his identity in Dhillon’s indictment filed in January 2020 was simply attributed to “Musician A.”
Pryor Cashman LLP, the law firm representing West in the case, as well as other law firms that represent him in family court and civil matters, have so far refused to accept service. Kanye himself has not been personally served with a notice of the subpoena.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin said “it’s just a matter of time” before a process server or federal marshall finds West and serves him personally with the paperwork.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Havey agreed that it’s time to drop the “Musician A” moniker and identify West as a potential witness, since prospective jurors will have to be questioned about him and their thoughts of him as a public figure.
According to the indictment, in 2019, Dhillon convinced a Florida-based philanthropist who was running a crowdsourcing charity campaign to wire $250,000 to a bank account allegedly affiliated with one of Kanye West’s companies. It was actually controlled by Dhillon.
As a part of the alleged plot, Dhillon created false emails purporting to be between himself and West to convince Bill Pulte, the grandson of the late founder of Detroit home-building giant PulteGroup, that he was close to the rapper. The truth, however, is that West had ended their relationship in October 2018.
Dhillon told Pulte that West was willing to lend money and star power to Pulte’s cause in exchange for financial support of West’s “design studio project,” according to the indictment.
Dhillon’s bank flagged the wired funds before he had the chance to “falsely represent” that he was associated with West in an effort to keep them from taking the money back. Ultimately, Pulte was able to alert his own bank to the potential fraud and stop the funds from being disbursed to Dhillon, according to court records.
Jury selection for the trial is scheduled to begin on April 4.
