Bay Area rapper pleads guilty to conspiracy

In a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, the popular Bay Area rapper known as Kafani pleaded guilty this week to four federal offenses, including conspiracy, records show.

Kafani, who goes by the name Amir Rashad and Mark Django Hicks, pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy, aggravated identity theft, bank fraud and wire fraud. Additionally, he admitted to violating his supervised release for an unrelated prior federal fraud conviction.

A popular rapper under the so-called Thizz Movement of the early 2000s, Kafani is perhaps best known for his hit single “Fast (Like a NASCAR).”

He is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair after being shot in Oakland in 2013 while recording a video for a record against fellow rapper Philthy Rich.

A sentencing date has not yet been set. Kafani faces up to 30 years in federal prison on the conspiracy count alone. Details of the plea agreement were not made public, but typically prosecutors will agree to seek a sentence no greater than an agreed-upon length in exchange for a defendant's guilty plea.

Kafani, 41, of Oakley is the latest of his seven codefendants to enter guilty pleas. Earlier this year, Dionysius “Donnie” Costello, Leif Skorochod and Susan Arreola-Martin all pleaded guilty to various charges from the indictment. Arreola-Martin also pleaded guilty to providing fentanyl to her adult granddaughter, a Martinez resident, who overdosed and died, records show.

A plea agreement that had been scheduled for Tuesday for another co-defendant, a Bay Area rapper named Demarcus “Smurf” Hicks, was postponed because he is hospitalized in Stockton, court records show.

Kafani's guilty plea brings to an end a federal case that has spanned two years and had a tumultuous beginning, where prosecutors successfully moved to jail him over an Instagram video where he accused an ex-girlfriend of snitching on him to the FBI. In the video, Kafani said the allegations against him were “all lies” and he would disprove them in court.

“You can't believe everything you read in the news,” Kafani said in one video.

He was released from pretrial detention in Santa Rita Jail after he argued the jail was ill-equipped to suit his medical needs. A judge initially heavily restricted how often he could post to social media but eased up after his attorney argued he needed to be able to use the internet to promote his music.

In the indictment, prosecutors accused the group of committing widespread identity theft that targeted wealthy California residents in Beverly Hills and throughout the Bay Area. In the criminal complaint filed last year, prosecutors accused Kafani of going to great lengths to impersonate some of the victims, including recruiting ArreolaMartin on the basis that he needed a “granny” to pose as an elderly woman.

One victim, who owns properties in Oakland, reported repeated attempts to start bank accounts and fraudulent loans in her name for four months. Another two victims, in Orinda, reported that a $325,000 loan that they knew nothing about had been taken out in their names, authorities said.

In other instances, the defendants allegedly used the stolen identifying information to buy gold bars — including one gold bar order totaling nearly $1 million from a victim in Beverly Hills. The FBI eventually caught onto this trend, and duped the defendants by sending $300 in silver bars to a Vallejo location where $24,000 worth of gold had previously been ordered, then conducted surveillance when the bars were picked up.